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MIND AND BODY. 

•* i 

THE THEORIES 

OF THEIR 

RELATION. 


BY 

ALEXANDER BAIN, LL.D„ 

PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 


THIRD EDITION. 


HENRY S. KING & CO., 

65, CORNHILL, AND 12, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. 

1874. 


(The right of translation and reproduction reserved.) 


I 


CONTENTS. 

V. 

- 4 - 

CHAPTER I. 

QUESTION STATED 


CHAPTER II. 

CONNEXION OF MIND AND BODY 

CHAPTER III. 

THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE, OR CON¬ 
COMITANT VARIATION ..... 

CHAPTER IV. 

GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY :—THE 
FEELINGS AND THE WILL . 

CHAPTER V. 

THE INTELLECT . . . . 

CHAPTER VI. 

HOW ARE MIND AND BODY UNITED ? . 

CHAPTER VII. 

HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL 


PAGE 

1 


6 


17 


43 


80 


320 


139 



“ 




















































MIND AND BODY. 


CHAPTEK I. 

QUESTION STATED. 

Many persons, mocking, ask—What has Mind to do 
with brain substance, white and grey ? Can any facts or 
laws regarding the spirit of man be gained through a 
scrutiny of nerve fibres and nerve cells ? 

The question, whatever may be insinuated in putting it, 
is highly relevant, and raises great issues. 

The conceivable answers are various :— 

First. Granting mind and body to be in our present 
life inseparable, yet the two might be supposed to have 
their modes of existence altogether distinct, the one being 
wholly unaffected by the other. Consequently, each would 
have to be studied in its own way, and for. its own sake 
alone. On this supposition, the study of brain matter 
might be interesting as Physiology and for applications 

B 




2 


QUESTION STATED. 


to Medicine and Surgery, but would be quite beyond 
the province of the mental philosopher. 

Although no intrinsic improbability attaches to this 
supposition, it is scarcely in accordance with what we find 
in the usual course of things. There is no example 
of two agents so closely united as mind and body, without 
some mutual interference or adaptation. Still, the union 
of our incorporeal and corporeal parts is a case quite 
peculiar, not to say unique; and we are not entitled 
to pronounce beforehand as to the behaviour of two 
such agents in respect of each other. 

Secondly. There might be certain mental functions 
of a lower kind, partially dependent upon the material 
organization, while the highest functions might be of a 
purely spiritual nature, in no way governed by physical 
conditions. For receiving impressions, in the first, 
instance, we need the External Senses; we are de¬ 
pendent on the constitution and working of the Eye, the 
Ear, the organ of Touch, and so on; yet the deeper 
processes named Memory, Reason, Imagination—may be 
pure spirit, beyond and apart from all material processes. 
In such a case, the enquirer into mind would do well 
to study the mechanism of the Senses; but, for the 
purpose he has in view, it would be needless to go 
farther. 

Thirdly. There may be an intimate relation and de¬ 
pendence of mind and body all through, every mental 
act having a concurrent bodily change; yet the two 


VARIOUS SUPPOSITIONS. 


3 


modes of operation may be so different as to throw 
no light on each other. No great laws may be traceable 
on either side, or the laws may be couched in such 
heterogeneous terms that we can make no comparison 
of the two. A pleasure and a nervous current are found 
to arise simultaneously; but the concurrence (we may 
suppose) signifies nothing, suggests nothing. There is 
something to be gained by connecting pleasure with 
a repast, a concert, or a holiday; but the mention of 
nerve currents gives no information of a practical kind, 
and does not add to our knowledge of the laws of pleasure. 

Fourthly. While allowing it to be possible that a 
thorough understanding of the brain would contribute 
to a knowledge of the mind, one might deny that any¬ 
thing yet known, or in immediate prospect of being 
known, is of value in that way. Thus the obtrusion of 
physiology at the present stage would be superfluous 
and impotent. 

Fifthly. The position may be taken that a knowledge 
of the bodily workings has already improved our know¬ 
ledge of the mental workings, and, as we continue our 
researches, will do so more and more. 

• Which of these suppositions is the truth could be seen 
only after examining the actual state of the case. On a 
theme so peculiar and so difficult, the only surmise 
admissible beforehand would be, that the two distinct 
natures could not subsist in their present intimate 
alliance, and yet be wholly indifferent to one another; 

B 2 


4 


QUESTION STATED. 


that they would be found to have some kind of mutual 
co-operation ; that the ongoings of the one would be 
often a clue to the ongoings of the other. 

The form of the interrogation that the foregoing 
remarks are designed to answer, may be objected to as 
purely rhetorical and in some measure unfair. If the 
matter of the brain were the only substance that mental 
functions could be attributed to, all the knowledge that 
we possess of that organ might not avail us much 
in laying down laws of connexion between mind and 
body. But such is not the fact. The entire bodily 
system, though in varying degrees, is in intimate alliance 
with mental functions. To confine our study to the 
nervous substance would be to misrepresent the connexion; 
and the knowledge of that substance, however complete, 
would not suffice for the solution of the problem. Looking 
at a child’s cut finger, we can divine its feelings; if we see 
a smiling countenance, we know something of the mental 
tone of the individual. 

It might seem that we must yet be a long way from 
understanding an organ so minute and so complicated as 
the Brain. If we were to confine ourselves to the one 
mode of post-mortem dissection, we should probably attain 
but a small measure of success. But another road is open. 
We can begin at the outworks, at the organs of sense and 
motion, with which the nervous system communicates ; we 
can study their operations during life, as well as examine 
their intimate structure ; we can experimentally vary all 


OUTWORKS OF THE BRAIN. 


5 


the circumstances of their operation ; we can find how 
they act upon the brain, and how the brain re-acts upon 
them. Using all this knowledge as a key, we may 
possibly unlock the secrets of the anatomical structure; 
we may compel the cells and fibres to disclose their 
meaning and purpose. 


CHAPTER II. 

CONNEXION OF MIND AND BODY. 

The facts showing that the connexion of Mind and 
Body is not occasional or partial, but thorough-going and 
complete, are such as the following:— 

In the first place, it has been noted in all ages and 
countries, that the Feelings possess a natural language or 
Expression. So constant are the appearances charac¬ 
terizing the different classes of emotions, that we regard 
them as a part of the emotions themselves. 

The smile of joy, the puckered features in pain, the 
stare of astonishment, the quivering of fear, the tones and 
glance of tenderness, the frown of anger,—are united in 
seemingly inseparable association with the states of feeling 
that they indicate. If a feeling arises without its appro¬ 
priate sign or accompaniment, we account for the failure 
either by voluntary suppression, or by the faintness of the 
excitement, there being a certain degree or intensity 
requisite to affect the bodily organs.* 

* The following remarks of Mr. Darwin are in point :—Most of our 
emotions [he should have said all] are so closely connected with their 
expression, that they hardly exist if the body remains passive. A man, 
for instance, may know that his life is in the extremest peril, and may 
strongly desire to save it; yet, as Louis XYI. said, when surrounded by 


EXPRESSION OF THE FEELINGS. 


7 


On this uniformity of connexion between feelings and 
their bodily expression depends our knowledge of each 
other’s mind and character. When anyone is pleased, 
or pained, or loving, or angry, unless there is purposed 
concealment, we are aware of the fact, and can even 
estimate in any given case the degree of the feeling. 

From a variety of causes, we are deeply interested in 
the outward display of emotion. The face of inanimate 
nature does not arrest our attention so strongly as the 
deportment of our fellow beings; in truth, the highest 
attraction of natural objects is imparted to them by a 
fictitious process of investing them with human feelings. 
The sun and the moon, the winds and the rivers, are less 
engaging when viewed as mere physical agencies, than 
when they are supposed to operate by human motives and 
purposes, loves and hates. 

The interest of the human presence, in all its various 
workings, regarded as symptomatic of mental processes, is 
laid hold of and heightened in the Fine Art of cultivated 
nations. To the painter, the sculptor, and the poet, 
every feeling has its appropriate manifestation. Not 
merely are the grosser forms of feeling thus linked 

a fierce mob, “ Am I afraid ? feel my pulse.” So a man may intensely 
hate another ; but until his bodily frame is affected, he cannot be said 
to be enraged. (‘ Expression,’ p. 239.) 

To the like effect Dr. Maudsley observes :—“ The special muscular 
action is not merely the exponent of the passion, but truly an essential 
part of it. If we try, while the features are fixed in the expression of 
one passion, to call up in the mind a different one, we shall find it 
impossible to do so.” (‘ Body and Mind,’ p. 30.) 


8 


CONNEXION OF MIND AND BODY. 


with material adjuncts; in the artist’s view, the loftiest, 
the noblest, the holiest of the human emotions, have their 
marked and inseparable attitude and deportment. In the 
artistic conceptions of the Middle Ages, more especially, 
the most divine attributes of the immaterial soul had their 
counterpart in the material body: the martyr, the saint, 
the blessed Virgin, the Saviour Himself, manifested their 
glorious nature by the sympathetic movements of the 
mortal framework. So far as concerns the entire compass 
of our feelings or emotions, it is the universal testimony 
of mankind that these have no independent spiritual sub¬ 
sistence, but are in every case embodied in our fleshly form. 

This very strong and patent fact has been usually kept 
out of view in the multifarious discussions respecting the 
Immaterial Soul. Apparent as it is to the vulgar, and 
intently studied as it has been by the sculptor, the 
painter, and the poet, it has been disregarded both by 
metaphysicians and by theologians when engaged in 
settling the boundaries of mind and body. 

A second class of proofs of the intimate connexion 
between Mind and Body is furnished by the effects of 
bodily changes on mental states, and of mental changes on 
bodily states. 

The embarrassment in dealing with this group of facts 
is their number. I shall commence with a few of the 
ordinary and recognised instances, and then refer to the 
comprehensive generalities arrived at by physiologists. 


THE BODY AFFECTING THE MIND. 


9 


As to the influence of bodily changes on Mental states, 
we have such facfs as the dependence of our feelings and 
moods upon hunger, repletion, the state of the stomach, 
fatigue and rest, pure and impure air, cold and warmth, 
stimulants and drugs, bodily injuries, disease, sleep, 
advancing years. These influences extend not merely to 
the grosser modes of feeling, and to such familiar exhibi¬ 
tions as after-dinner oratory, but also to the highest 
emotions of the mind—love, anger, aesthetic feeling, and 
moral sensibility. “ Health keeps an Atheist in the 
dark.” Bodily affliction is often the cause of a total 
change in the moral nature. 

The bodily routine of our daily life is the counterpart 
of the mental routine. A healthy man wakens in the 
morning with a flush of spirits and energy ; his first meal 
confirms and re-inforces the state. The mental powers and 
susceptibilities are then at their maximum; as the nutrition 
is used up in the system, they gradually fade, but may be 
renewed once and again by refreshment and brief remission 
of toil. Towards the end of the day lassitude sets in, and 
fades into the deep unconsciousness of healthy sleep. 

Since the Intellectual faculties appear to be most 
removed from the effect of physical agencies, I will quote 
a few facts, showing that in reality they have no exemption 
from the general rule. The memory rises and falls with 
the bodily condition ; being vigorous in our fresh moments, 
and feeble when we are fatigued or exhausted. It is 


10 


CONNEXION OF MIND AND BODY - . 


related by Sir Henry Holland that on one occasion he 
descended, on the same day, two deep mines in the Hartz 
mountains, remaining some hours in each. In the second 
mine he was so exhausted with inanition and fatigue, that 
his memory utterly failed him ; he could not recollect a 
single word of German. The power came back after taking 
food and wine. Old age notoriously impairs the memory 
in ninety-nine men out of a hundred. 

In the delirium of fever the sense of hearing sometimes 
becomes extraordinarily acute. Among the premonitory 
symptoms of brain disease has been noticed an unusual 
delicacy of the sense of sight; the physician suspects that 
there is already congestion of blood, to be followed perhaps 
by effusion. 

Any person fancying that trains of thinking have little 
dependence on the bodily organs should also reflect on 
such facts as these. When walking, or engaged in any 
bodily occupation, if an interesting idea occurs to the mind, 
or is imparted to us by another person, we suddenly stop, 
and remain at rest, until the excitement has subsided. 
Again, our cogitations usually induce some bodily attitudes 
(laid hold of by artists as the outward expression of 
Thought) as well as movements; and if anything occurs to 
disturb these, the current of thinking is suspended or 
diverted. Why should sleep suspend all thought, except 
the incoherency of dreaming (absent in perfect sleep), if a 
certain condition of the bodily powers were not indispens¬ 
able to the intellectual functions ? 


THE MIND AFFECTING THE BODY. 


11 


Much stress has been laid upon certain apparent excep¬ 
tions to these sweeping rules. Under bodily weakness, 
abstinence, fatigue, disease, and old age, individuals occa¬ 
sionally manifest high mental energy and elation, and 
great intellectual power. The lives of martyrs and heroes 
are replete with such exceptional vigour. If the inference be 
that the mind, notwithstanding a large amount of depen¬ 
dence on the body, is still, to a certain degree, self-support¬ 
ing and independent, we must ask why the fact should be 
exhibited only in a few rare cases ? The supposition 
resembles in partiality and capriciousness the Platonic 
Immortality, conferred only on philosophers. Still, any 
complete view of the relations of Mind and Body 
should take account of these striking exceptions; and we 
shall revert to them at a later stage. 

The influence of mental changes upon the Body is sup¬ 
ported by an equal force of testimony. Sudden outbursts 
of emotion derange the bodily functions. Fear paralyzes 
the digestion. Great mental depression enfeebles all the 
organs. Protracted and severe mental labour brings on 
disease of the bodily organs. On the other hand, happy 
outward circumstances are favourable to health and 
longevity. 

In the personifications so common in our early poetry 
the various passions are described by the marks that their 
long dominance leaves on the bodily figure. In Sackville’s 
“ Induction,” Dread is described as follows :— 



12 


CONNEXION OF MIND AND BODY. 


Next saw we Dread all trembling’, how he shook, 

With foot uncertain proffer’d here and there : 

Benumb’d of speech, and, with a ghastly look, 

Search’d every place, all pale and dead for fear. 

And Misery:— 

His face was lean, and some deal pined away, 

And eke his hands consumed to the bone. 

In considering minutely the evidences of the connexion 
of mind and body, we gradually perceive that the organ 
most intimately associated with mind is the Brain. Other 
organs have been assigned, at various times, as the special 
seats of mental activity, but these are now abandoned. 
Yet, although the Brain is by pre-eminence the mental 
organ, other organs co-operate; more especially, the Senses, 
the Muscles, and the great Viscera. 

The peculiar structure of the Brain will be afterwards 
adverted to. For the present, I remark that it is a very 
large and complicated organ ; it receives a copious supply 
of blood, computed as one-fifth of the entire circu¬ 
lation, a circumstance betokening great activity of some 
kind or other. Now the facts that connect the mind with 
the brain are numerous and irresistible. Let us rehearse 
a few of them, under the two aspects already stated ; brain 
changes affecting the mind, mental changes affecting the 
brain. 

Under the first topic, the commonest observation is the 
effect of a blow on the head, which suspends for the 
time consciousness and thought; at a certain pitch of 
severity it produces a permanent injury of the faculties, 



MIND AND THE BRAIN. 


13 


impairing the memory, or occasioning some form of mental 
derangement. It may also remedy derangement; there 
are cases on record, where a blow on the head has cured 
Idiocy. 

All those abuses and casualties that impair the mental 
faculties act upon the nervous substance. Thus, stimulat¬ 
ing drugs operate upon the nerves. Many instances of 
imbecility of mind are distinctly traced to causes affecting 
the nutrition of the brain. 

The more careful and studied observations of physiolo¬ 
gists have shewn beyond question that the brain as a 
whole is indispensable to thought, to feeling, and to 
volition ; while they have further discriminated the func¬ 
tions of its different parts. 

Next, as regards mental changes leading to brain 
changes, or being associated with them, we can quote 
very extensive observations. Thus, after great mental 
exertion or excitement, there is an increase of the 
products of nervous waste. The alkaline phosphates 
removed from the blood by the kidneys are derived from 
the brain and nerves ; and these are increased after severe 
exercise of the mind. 

Again, violent emotions are among the causes <of 
paralysis, which is a disease of the nerves or nerve 
centres. 

Most decisive of all, under this head, is the wide 
experience of the insane. Among the chief causes of 




14 


CONNEXION OF MIND AND BODY. 


insanity must be reckoned excessive drafts on the mind — 
as, for example, long and severe mental exertion, and 
sudden mental shocks, usually of disaster and misfortune, 
but occasionally even of joy. 

The association of brain-derangement with mind-de¬ 
rangement is all but a perfectly established induction. In 
the great mass of insane patients the alteration of the brain 
is visible and pronounced. I may quote as evidence on 
this head a pamphlet by Drs. J. B. Tuke and Rutherford, 
“ On the Morbid Appearances met with in the Brains of 
Thirty Insane Persons.” ‘The brains examined were those 
of patients whose deaths occurred consecutively, and were 
in no way picked on account of any peculiarity.’ The 
forms of disease exemplified were general paralysis, de¬ 
mentia with paralysis, chronic dementia, epileptic in¬ 
sanity. In every case there was noticed a marked depar¬ 
ture in one form or another from the healthy structure of 
the brain. The authors enumerate nine species of morbid 
changes, discovered by microscopical examination. The 
occurrence of a case that presented no visible derange¬ 
ment would not be a conclusive exception, inasmuch as 
there may be alterations of substance that are not 
visible. It is believed, however, that in all cases ol 
pronounced mental aberration, disease of the brain is 
present in a marked form. 

A very instructive class of facts may be adduced, con¬ 
necting mental action with the quantity and quality of 


THE MIND AFFECTED BY THE BLOOD. 


15 


the blood supplied to the brain. "No organ is active 
without blood. The demand made by the brain corresponds 
with the extent and energy of its functions. Deficiency 
in the circulation is accompanied with feeble mani¬ 
festations of mind. In sleep, there is a diminution of the 
supply of arterial blood to the brain. General depletion 
lowers all the functions generally, mind included. On the 
other hand, when the cerebral circulation is quickened, 
the feelings are roused, the thoughts are more rapid, 
the volitions more vehement; great mental excitement 
is always accompanied with an unusual flow of blood, often 
outwardly shown by the throbbing of the vessels. In 
delirium, the circulation attains an extraordinary pitch. 

The blood must possess a certain quality , involving the 
presence of certain ingredients and the absence of others. 
Wholesome nourishment supplies the first condition of 
nervous and mental activity; inanition or starvation, 
feebleness of digestion, militate against the exercise of the 
mental functions. Moreover, the blood may be abundant 
and rich in nutritive matters, yet the organ of the mind 
may be unduly depressed by the excessive drafts of the 
other interests of the system, as, for example, the muscles; 
under great muscular strain, there is very little capability 
of mental effort. Again, there are certain substances, 
known as stimulants, that are considered to supply the 
blood with an element specially provocative of nervous 
change ; as alcohol, tobacco, tea, opium, &c. 

The substances that must be absent include the so-called 



16 


CONNEXION OF MIND AND BODY. 


poisons, and the impurities of the body itself, which several' 
large viscera are occupied in removing. The chief of these 
impurities are carbonic acid and urea; either of them left 
to accumulate in the blood leads to mental depression, 
unconsciousness, and finally death. Hence the mental 
tone depends no less upon the vigorous condition of the 
purifying organs—lungs, liver, intestines, kidneys, skin 
—than upon the presence of nutritive material obtained 
from the food. 


CHAPTER III. 


THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE, OR 
CONCOMITANT VARIATION. 

The dependence of one thing upon another, is ordinarily- 
shown by two classes of facts—the first, the presence of 
the cause followed by the presence of the effect; the 
second, the absence of the cause followed by the absence 
of the effect: as when we prove that lighting a fire is the 
cause of smoke, or oxygen the cause of putrefaction and 
decay. Of the two methods, the second—the . absence of 
the cause followed by the absence of the effect—is the most 
decisive; the preservation of meat by excluding air is the 
best proof that air, or some ingredient of it, is the cause 
of putrefaction. More especially convincing is the abrupt 
removal of a supposed cause, leading at once to the sus¬ 
pension of an effect. 

There are cases, however, where we cannot make the 
experiment of removing an agent. We cannot get away 
from the earth where we live. We cannot remove the 
moon from its sphere, so as to see what actions on the 
earth depend upon it; we cannot by an abrupt suspension 
of lunar gravitation prove that the tides are very largely 
dependent on lunar influence. 


c 


18 THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE. 


For such cases, recourse is had to a third expedient, 
which happily solves the difficulty, and furnishes the proof 
required. If the agency in question, although irremov¬ 
able, passes through gradations whose amount can he 
measured, we are able to observe whether the effect has 
corresponding changes of degree; and if a strict concomi¬ 
tance is observable between the intensity of the cause and 
the intensity of the effect, we have a presumption that may 
rise to positive proof of the connexion. It is thus shown that 
the tides depend on the moon and the sun conjointly ; that 
the gaseous and liquid states of matter are due to heat. 

In such a question as the connexion of mind and body, 
the potent method of removing the cause is not applic¬ 
able. We cannot dissect the compound, man, into body 
apart and mind apart; we cannot remove mind so as to 
see if the body will vanish. We may remove the body, and : 
in so doing we find that mind has disappeared; but the \ 
experiment is not conclusive; for, in removing the body 
we remove our indicator of the mind, namely, the bodily 
manifestations—as if in testing for magnetism we should 
set aside the needle and other tokens of its presence. 

Neither can the method of absence be employed upon 
the chief organ of mind—the brain. The removal of the 
brain is undoubtedly the extinction of the manifestations 
of mind, but it is also, except in very low organisms 
the extinction of the bodily life. Important results are 
gained by partial removal of the brain, and we can reason 



SIZE OF BRAIN AND MENTAL POWER. 


19 


from these to what would happen by removing the 
whole. This is the nearest approach we can make to the 
best form of experimental proof. 

The method of Concomitance or Correspondence is, how¬ 
ever, applicable to the full extent. We can compare the 
gradations of the brain and nervous system through the 
animal series, and observe whether there are like grada¬ 
tions in the powers of the mind. 


A considerable time has elapsed since attention was 
called by phrenologists to the connexion between size 
of brain and mental development in human beings. The 
large heads of men distinguished for high intellectual 
endowments, or for great energy of character in other 
ways, have been contrasted with the small heads of idiots. 
The rule is not strictly maintained in every instance ; 
occasionally a stupid man has a larger brain than a clever 
man. But these are only individual exceptions to a pre¬ 
vailing arrangement. When extensive statistics are taken, 
the conclusion is established that great mental superiority 
is accompanied with a more than average size of brain. 

The following is a table of the brain weights of several 
distinguished men :— 

Cuvier . . . 645 oz. 

Dr. Abercrombie. 

Daniel Webster 
Lord Campbell . 

De Morgan . 

Gauss 


645 
63 , 

535 , 

535 , 

52 75 , 
52-6 , 

c 2 



20 THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE. 

The average male brain (in Europeans) is 49j oz., the 
female 44 oz. (Quain’s Anatomy, 7th edition, p. 571). 

Among idiots have been found brains weighing 27 oz., 
25f oz., 22J oz., 19f oz., 18J oz., 15 oz., 13 oz., 8J- oz. 

According to Dr. Thurnam (.Journal of Mental Science 
for 1866), the brains of insane persons are 2J per cent, 
below the average of the sane. 

The concomitance of size of nervous system with 
mental power, throughout the animal series, is sufficiently 
admitted for the purpose of our general argument. The 
agreement is not strict, because the nervous system serves 
other functions besides those that are purely mental. The 
mere propulsion of the muscles demands a large supply 
of nerve force, and animals whose muscles are large and 
active have correspondingly large brains. Thus it is that 
the maximum size of the brain is reached, not in human 
beings, but in the elephant tribe, and after them the whales, 
whose ponderous bodies demand an enormous muscular 
expenditure. The elephant’s brain weighs from 8 to 10 
pounds. The whale’s brain is said to weigh from 5 to 8 
pounds. The brain of one 75 feet long was found to ■ 
weigh 7 pounds; Dr. Struthers found the brain of a young 
whale, 14^ feet long, 3 lbs. 12 oz., of a tusk whale or sea- 
unicorn 17 feet long, 3 lbs. 14J oz. 

In addition to propulsion of the muscles, a considerable 
amount of nerve force must be expended in supporting or 
aiding the processes of organic life—digestion, respiration, 



MANNER OP WORKING OF THE NERVES. 


21 


circulation, and other operations. The strongest proof on 
this point is the very great falling off in these various 
functions when the nerve force is monopolized for intense 
mental or muscular exertion. 

It is found that tall men, as a rule, have larger brains 
than small men. 

Comparing the increasing size of the brain with the 
increase in mental power, we are struck w T ith the small¬ 
ness of the one increase as compared with the other. An 
ordinary male human brain is 48 oz.; the brains of extra¬ 
ordinary men seldom reach Cuvier’s figure, 64 oz. Now 
the intellectual force of the ordinary man is surpassed by 
Cuvier in a far higher ratio than this. Taking the mere 
memory, which is the basis of intellect, an ordinary man 
could not retain one-third or one-fourth, perhaps not one- 
tenth, of the facts stored up in the mind of a Cuvier. The 
comparison of animals with human beings would sustain 
a similar inference. There would be no exaggeration in 
saying that while size of brain increases in arithmetical 
proportion, intellectual range increases in geometrical pro¬ 
portion. 

A still more important and suggestive correspondence is 
discernible in the manner of working of the nervous 
system. Notwithstanding the radical distinction of nature 
between bodily action and mental action, we are surprised 
to see how closely certain circumstances of the one are 
conjoined with similar circumstances of the other. To 


22 THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE. 


understand this argument, a brief consideration must be 
given to the plan or mechanism of the nervous system. 

Undoubtedly the best way of approaching the nervous 
structure is to commence from outside appearances. 
Every one is aware of the existence of sense organs and 
of moving organs; and more than that, each of us 
could recount a great many minute particulars respecting 
both classes. Now a study of these familiar facts suggests 
some of the deepest arrangements of the nervous structure. 

The Sense Organs, usually reckoned five in number, 
are all more or less open to view. The organ of the 
sense of touch is the entire covering or integument of 
the body, the skin. The others are confined to special 
localities. By a sense organ is meant a portion of the 
body exposed to certain agents, and, when stimulated, 
giving birth to feelings of the mind. Each sense is 
suited to a particular class of influences : Touch to solid 
pressures ; Hearing to aerial pressures; Taste to liquid or 
dissolved matters having certain properties of a chemical 
nature; Smell to gaseous effluvia of a like nature ; Sight 
to the rays of the sun or other luminous bodies. 

The Moving Organs are all parts of the body—head, 
face, eyes, mouth, throat, neck, back, arms, legs, &c., &c. 
Every one of these goes through a great variety of changes 
of posture, alternations, combinations, and with greater 
or less rapidity and continuance. The motions are nearly 
all visible to the eye. The moving agents are concealed 


RELATIONSHIP OF SENSES AND MOVEMENTS. 


23 


from outward view, but can be easily got at by dissec¬ 
tion. The red flesh of meat, called muscular tissue, is 
a stringy substance made up into separate masses called 
muscles, of the most various shapes and sizes, but all 
agreeing in one property, called contractility or forcible 
shrinking. A muscle has its two extremities attached 
to bones or other parts, and in contracting it draws the 
two attachments nearer one another, and thereby effects the 
movements that we see. A broad spreading muscle placed 
over the temple and attached to the skull at one end, 
and at the other end to the lower jaw, when under con¬ 
traction, closes the jaw in biting; the closure being 
accomplished with a certain energy, according to the size 
of the muscle and other circumstances. The large 
muscles of the fore part of the thigh are so placed as 
to straighten the leg when bent at the knee. The 
numerous movements of the human hand need a corre¬ 
sponding number of muscles. There are between four and 
five hundred muscles in the human body. 

.v 

We must next consider the mutual relationship of these 
two sets of organs, Sense Organs and Moving Organs. 
Something needs to act upon a sense organ in order that 
we may get a sensation ; and something needs to act upon 
a moving organ, or a muscle, in order to a movement. 
Both the one and the other are of themselves inactive or 
quiescent. The stimulus of the sense organs is generally 
apparent; a solid body touching the skin, a morsel in the 


24 THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE. 


mouth, a perfume to the nostrils, and so on. The stimu¬ 
lants of .the moving organs are not so apparent: their 
origin is internal. 

We are familiar with a large class of instances, where 
a sense stimulus seems also to be a motor stimulus. A 
light anywhere appearing suddenly makes us turn to look 
at it. A morsel on the tongue awakens all the movements 
of mastication. Let us examine the facts more closely. 
My hand is lying quiescent on the table; something 
touches it lightly, a fly, or a feather; there is a rush of 
activity to certain muscles, and the hand is moved away. 
Well, supposing the two things to be remote cause and 
effect: the light contact—cause, the motion—effect: what 
may we suppose as to the intermediate links ? Unless 
the process be something quite unique, there must be a 
channel of communication between the skin of the hand 
and the group of muscles in the shoulder, upper arm, 
and forearm, that unite to withdraw the hand. Assuming 
the concurrence of ten muscles, there must be a ramifying 
thread of communication from any point in the skin of 
the hand to all these ten muscles. If a similar effect were 
to occur in the foot, the part moved would be the leg, 
showing lines of communication between the skin of the 
foot or leg and the muscles of the hip, thigh, and leg, of 
which a certain group concur in the single effect of with¬ 
drawing the foot. 

Suppose now, instead of a light contact, the hand is 
sharply pinched in the very same place. The previous 


WIDE RANGE OF COMMUNICATIONS. 


25 


case shows the evidence of lines of communication between 
the skin of the hand and a group of muscles of the shoulder 
and arm, and we are prepared for a similar manifestation, 
perhaps more violent. We are not disappointed* as to the 
violence ; the same group of muscles appear to be roused, 
and to act more strongly; the withdrawal of the hand is 
greatly quickened. We find, however, that this is not all. 
With the mere arm movements are coupled a great many 
more—in the other arm, the legs, the body, and the face, 
besides the more concealed movements shown in the voice, 
which emits a cry, shout, or other exclamation. We see 
that any part of the skin of the hand is in connexion 
with perhaps two hundred muscles ; the notable circum¬ 
stance being that a weak touch does not arouse the wider 
circle of movements. At all events, here is a fact showing 
the exceedingly numerous and complicated communications 
between a given portion of the skin and the moving 
organs. The complication grows upon us as we pursue 
our reflections upon ordinary facts. We remark tha,t a 
similar pinch upon any part of the skin—hands, arms, 
legs, back—will induce a similar wave of effects; so that 
every portion of the integument of the body has its lines 
of communication with a very large number of muscles. 
Nay, farther, if we try similar expeiiments upon the other 
senses] we shall find similar effects ; with a slight applica¬ 
tion, a limited class of movements; with a severe applica¬ 
tion, a wide display identical in general character with 
those due to a pinch of the skin. A very bitter taste, a 






26 THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE. 

/ 

malodour, a screeching discord, an intense flame, will each 
awaken movements of limbs, body, face, and voice. Every 
one of the senses is in the same extensive communication 
with the organs of motion. 

The effects of a sense stimulation are not ended in a 
mere jump or attitude performed by a particular group of 
muscles; very often there is a long succession of move¬ 
ments and attitudes. This raises the complication still 
farther. The impetus of the sensation is sufficient to 
stimulate first one movement, then another, and another; 
showing a new class of lines of communication—those 
between the moving organs themselves. The bending of 
an arm is followed by its straightening; the closing of the 
jaws is succeeded by a lateral grinding motion. Now 
continuous movements cannot be maintained without a 
definite communication between each movement and its 
successor; walking and flying are rendered possible by an 
arrangement for connecting each movement with the one 
that regularly follows it. 

It is needless, at this stage, to probe deeper that 
system of complicated intercommunication between sense 
organs and moving organs, and between one set of 
moving organs and another, involving hundreds or thou¬ 
sands of connexions. These are as yet mere matter of 
inference; seeing that an effect is regularly followed by 
another at a distance, we presume the existence of some 
means of conveying an agency or force between the two 
localities. Not till we examine the interior of the body 


NERVES AND NERVE CENTRES. 27 

do we know what is the medium employed. On such 
examination we discover a set of silvery threads, or cords 
of various sizes, ramifying from centres to all parts of 
the body, including both sense-surfaces and muscles. 
These are the nerves. The centres whence they ramify 
are constituted by one large continuous lump, principally 
of the same silvery material, occupjdng the skull or 
cranium as a rounded mass, and continuing into the 
back bone as a long flattened rod, about half an inch 
! across. The mass in the skull is the brain ; the rod in 
the back bone is the spinal cord. The vastly numerous 
inter-communications, above shadowed forth, are effected 
through the nerves and these central masses. 

The centres are, in by far the largest part, made up of 
' the same material as the nerve threads; they contain, 
however, an additional material. To the eye this second 
material has a different tint, an ashy grey appearance, 
as is seen by cutting into any portion of the brain or 
spinal cord of a man or an animal. This visible differ¬ 
ence enables us to trace the distribution, and discover 
the proportions of the two kinds of material. In the 
brain of man and of the higher animals, we see a curious 
arrangement of the surface into ridges and furrows, called 
convolutions, running in various directions; and the con¬ 
voluted surface consists of a thin uniform cake of the grey 
substance, while the interior mass is principally made up 
of the white nervous matter. 

The peculiarities of these two sorts of material have 





28 THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE. 

been exhaustively studied, and the significance of both 
is more or less perfectly ascertained or surmised. 

Under the microscope, the White matter, constituting 
the nerve-threads wholly and the centres in great part, 
is seen to consist of fibres or very minute threads, every 
visible nerve being a bundle of these. The Grey matter 
is a mixture of these fibres with a distinct class of bodies, 
called cells, vesicles , or corpuscles —small solid bodies, 
round, pear-shaped, or irregular, with prolongations to 
connect them with the nerves. These two elements—fibres 
and cells—together with enclosing membranes, blood¬ 
vessels, and cellular tissue, make up the nervous system, 
both centres and ramifications. 

The first significant feature of the two nervous elements 
is the size. Both are exceedingly minute. The large 
mass of nerve-substance is an aggregation of a very 
great number of very small fibres and corpuscles. The 
fibres range in thickness from . 1 ^ 1 00 to tv^o-o of an inch, the 
medium or average being -g-oVo °f an inch. There are two 
varieties of fibres; the chief, named “ white,” or “tubular” 
fibres, appear to consist each (1) of an outer structureless 
membrane ; (2) of an interior surrounding layer of fatty 
matter; (3) of a central core or cylinder, which is not 
fatty, but albuminous (nitrogenous, or protein) in com¬ 
position. To this central axis is attached the proper 
function of the fibres; and at the two extremities of the 
nerves the axis appears alone, divested of its two enve¬ 
lopes : it does not exceed Tovliro o- of an inch in thickness. 



MULTIPLICATION OF FIBRES AND CELLS. 


29 


The cells or corpuscles are of various shapes,—round, 
oval, pear-shaped, tailed, and star-like or radiated. They 
consist of pulpy matter, with an eccentric roundish body 
or nucleus, enclosing one or more smaller nuclei, sur¬ 
rounded by coloured granules. They range from to 
-g^Vo °f an inch in diameter. Although from the small¬ 
ness in the amount of the grey matter as compared 
with the white, and from the greater diameter of the 
corpuscles, the number of these, in a cross section, is less 
than the number of fibres, yet as they lie in three 
dimensions, while the nerves lie only in two, their 
numerical aggregate is much beyond the aggregate of 
branching nerve-fibres, although not so great as the total 
number of fibrous connexions. 

The diagram Fig. 1, on the next page, represents the 
cell in its various leading forms. 

We may now judge of the immense multiplication of 
nervous elements in the brain and nerves. Estimates 
have been made of the number of fibres in individual 
nerves. The third cerebral nerve (the common motor of 
the eye) is supposed to have as many as fifteen thousand 
fibres. In the sensory nerves the fibres are smaller; 
and in the large nerve of sight, the optic nerve, the 
number must be very great, probably not less than one 
hundred thousand, and perhaps much more. The number 
of fibres making up the white substance of the brain 
must be counted by hundreds of millions. 

In this enormous multiplication of independent nerve- 




SO THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE. 


elements we seem to have the suitable provision for the 
vast number of communications needed in the ordinary 
actions of human beings, as above exemplified. 

There are some significant facts regarding the arrange¬ 
ment of the nerve-elements. It is to be noted, first, that 
the nerve-fibres proceed from the nerve-centres to the 
extremities of the body without a break, and without 

Fig. 1 * 



uniting or fusing with one another; so that each unfail¬ 
ingly delivers its separate message. Without this, the 
greatness of their number would not give variety 
of communication. The chief use of the two coatings 

* Nucleated nerve-cells magnified 170 diameters ; a and b from the 
cerebellum ; c and d from the medulla oblongata ; n the nucleus of a 
cell. 

In Chap. V. a diagram is given (fig. 3) showing the continuation of 
the fibres into the corpuscles or cells. 


PLAN OF NERVE COMMUNICATIONS. 


31 


or envelopes appears to be to secure the isolation of the 
central axis. 

Remark, next, that the plan of communicating from 
one part of the body to another,—as from the skin of 
the hand to the muscles of the arm,—is not by a direct 
route from the one spot to the other, but by a nervous 
centre. Every nerve-fibre rising from the surface of the 
body, or from the eye or the ear, goes first of all to the 
spinal cord or to some part of the brain ; and any influence 
exerted on the movements by stimulating these fibres 
passes out from some nervous centre. As in the circulation 
of letters by post, there is no direct communication 
between one street and another, but every letter passes 
first to the central office, so the transmission of influence 
from one member of the body to another is exclusively 
through a centre, or (with a few exceptions) through some 
part of the nervous substance contained in the head and 
backbone. Every communication is centralized; and, in 
consequence, there is not only great economy of the 
conducting machinery, but also an avoidance of conflicting 
nessages. 

When we speak of the nerves all ending in the nervous 
centres, we mean the grey substance, or the aggregate 
of fibres and corpuscles. Every nerve ends in a corpuscle; 
and from the same corpuscle arises some other fibre or fibres 
either proceeding back to the body direct, or proceeding 
to other corpuscles, whence new fibres arise, with the 
same alternative. Of the fibres of the brain and spinal cord 


32 THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE. 


the greater number connect corpuscle with corpuscle; a 
small number go outwards to the muscles, forming the 
pathway of communication with the moving members. 

The Corpuscles are thus the medium of connexion of 
in-going with out-going nerves, and hence of communica¬ 
tion between the outlying parts of the body. In them 
is organized that system of complicated correspondence, 
whereby an influence in one part can arouse a wave of 
effects in many other parts. They are the crossings or 
grand junctions, where each part can multiply its connex¬ 
ions with the remaining parts. There is not a muscle of 
the body that could not be reached directly or indirectly 
by a pressure on the tip of the fore-finger; and this rami¬ 
fied connexion is effected through the nerve-cells or 
corpuscles; just as, by means of the distribution of post- 
offices and lines of road, a letter from any village in 
Europe can be speedily sent to any other village. 

A third point to be noted regarding the nerve elements 
—fibre and corpuscle—is their material, composition, or 
quality. The active part (the core or central axis) of the 
fibres is composed of particles of an albuminous substance. 
The corpuscles are also made up of the same material, 
combined with fatty substances in granules. The 
substance of both is highly unstable, or easily acted on by 
external influences of every kind; but of the two elements 
the corpuscles are considered the most susceptible to 
change. We can but dimly conceive the precise mode of 


THE MATERIAL OF THE NERVES. 33 

change that goes on in the one or in the other; it is a 
change that, when once begun, propagates itself along the 
whole line of open communications ; and it is a change that 
finds a certain limit only by altering the structure of the 
nerve. The restoration from the altered structure is due 
to the blood, which circulates largely among nerve-fibres, 
but still more largely in the grey matter w T hich contains 
the corpuscles; it has been computed (Herbert Spencer) 
that five times as much blood circulates in the grey or 
corpuscular substance as in the white or fibrous substance. 
In these imperfectly understood changes of the nerve-tissue, 
we have the embodiment of what is called the nerve-force. 
This is an agent with various powers—mechanical agency, 
heat agency, chemical agency; all which are due to the 
molecular alteration of the nerve-substance, the comple¬ 
ment of the change being a supply of blood in proportion 
to the force set free. 

To return now to the tracing of correspondence and 
concomitance between mental acts and bodily changes. One 
grand correspondence is already implied, which will be 
afterwards more fully discussed—the variety and multitude 
of our mental acts on the one hand, and the multitude of 
nervous elements on the other. If our nervous system 
consisted at most of one thousand ultimate fibres, and one 
thousand corpuscles, nobody could show how these could 
be manipulated so as to execute all the variety of the out¬ 
ward manifestations of feelings and thoughts. But great 

D 


34 THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE. 


as is the number and variety of mental states, the nervous 
system, in its prodigious extent and multiplication, seems 
to show a correspondence by no means inadequate. 

The correspondence of number of elements with com¬ 
plicacy of function is seen to advantage in the senses. 
The nerve of sight is the largest of the nerves of special 
sense; its ramifications in the retina are numerous and 
closely set. Nerve-corpuscles occur in that part along 
with the fibres, to increase the susceptibility to disturbance 
under a slight shock. 

While in the more intellectual senses—Sight, Hearing, 
and Touch—the nerves have their protecting and isolating 
sheaths corresponding w 7 ith the distinctness and separate¬ 
ness of the parts of the impression ; in Smell, the nerves 
are a plexus of unsheathed fibres, corresponding with the 
fusion of the odorous impression into one whole, without 
distinction of parts (Spencer). 

It has been pointed out by Mr. Spencer that to increase 
the delicacy of Sight and Hearing, where the impulse on 
the surface is very feeble, there are “ multipliers of dis¬ 
turbance,” or means of exaggerating the intensity of the 
shock. Thus, in the Eye, the retina is-composed of 
ultimate fibrils unprotected by their medullary sheath, 
and of nerve-corpuscles, which are more unstable than 
the substance of the fibres. In the Ear, the little sand 
granules (otolites) and the rods, by being set in motion 
increase the action on the nerve of hearing. 

The dark pigment of the eye, seen through the pupil as 



CORRESPONDENCES IN THE SENSES. 


a deep brown shade, is an essential of good vision, being a 
means of intensifying the action of the light. Attention 
has been drawn by Dr. Wm. Ogle to the fact, that pigment 
occurs also in the olfactory regions, and he traces to this 
fact an increase in the acuteness of smell. Dr. Ogle 
attributes the acuteness of the smell of the negroes, to 
their greater abundance of pigment. Albinos and white 
animals neither see nor smell so delicately as creatures 
that are dark-coloured. In the membranous labyrinth of 
the ear also, black pigment is found. (“Anosmia,” by Dr. 
William Ogle, Medico-Chirurgical Transactions , vol. 
liii.) 

Facts such as these show how deeply the mental 
character may be affected by the structure of the material 
organs. ,( A small difference in the pigment of a sense, 
by giving that sense greater susceptibility, may determine 
the animal’s preferences, tastes, and pursuits; in other 
words, its whole destiny. In a human being, the circum¬ 
stance of being acutely sensitive in one or two leading 
senses, may rule the entire character—intellectual and 
moral/' ’The contrast between a sensuous and a reflective 
nature might take its rise in the outworks of the sense 
organs, apart even from the endowments of the brain. In 
this case the nervous system would follow the cue, instead 
of taking the lead, of the special senses. 

Next, as to correspondences between mind and body, in 
respect to their mode of action. Notwithstanding the 

D 2 


36 THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE. 


extreme difference of the two kinds of activity, bodily 
and mental, we may yet find points of coincidence. 

One remarkable coincidence is as respects Time. 

By a series of very ingenious and conclusive experi¬ 
ments, the rate of passage of the nerve-force has been 
shown to be about ninety feet per second. This measure 
is made upon the course of the nerve-threads, and does 
not include the passage through the grey matter of the 
centres, with their mass of corpuscles. Now the time of 
a complete circuit of action, beginning at a stimulation of 
the senses, and ending in certain movements, depends 
partly on the time of moving along the nerves, and partly 
on the time of passing through the centres, where a 
number of corpuscles must be traversed. Estimates have 
been made as to this last operation, which, from the nature 
of the case, is likely to be somewhat various ; for not only 
may the central mass to be penetrated be of various 
extent, but also there is a liability to conflicting currents. 
The case of least internal delay is what is termed reflex 
action , where a motion answers to a stimulus, without the 
intervention of the will, as in the involuntary start from a 
pinch in the hand. By experiments on frogs, Helmholtz 
found that a period of from ^ to of a second was 
occupied by the reflex act ; now the length of the entire 
nerve-tract could only be a few inches, which would hardly 
occupy the two-hundredth of a second, if that tract were 
an uninterrupted nerve-thread. 

The time occupied by a sensation and subsequent voli- 



CORRESPONDENCES OF TIME. 


37 


tion has been measured in circumstances where there were 
no conflicting impulses. This is done by ascertaining the 
time elapsing between the sensation of a signal, and the 
answering by the hand. A comparison is made between 
two situations; one where the person is prepared before¬ 
hand, by knowing where he is to be affected and what 
part is to move, in which case the attention is turned upon 
the proper points. The other situation is where a person 
does not know which part is to be struck, and which part 
is to be moved ; in this last case he has to exercise an act 
of judgment or consideration, and the difference of time 
is about the Arth of a second. Two persons are separated 
by a screen; one is to utter a syllable and the other to 
repeat it as soon as possible. If the syllable has been 
agreed upon, the interval of repetition occupies from one 
sixth to one fourth of a second; if it is not agreed upon, 
the interval is one twelfth of a second more. 

The example is put by M. Du Bois Raymond of a whale, 
ninety feet long, struck in the tail by a harpoon; one 
second would be occupied in transmitting the impression 
to the brain ; a fraction of a second, say one tenth, in 
traversing the brain ; a full second in returning the motor 
impulse ; so that the boat would have upwards of two 
seconds for escaping the danger. 

Thus we have physiological evidence on the one hand, 
that a certain time is occupied by the nerve-force, and we 
have mental evidence on the other, that an equivalent 
time is occupied by sensation, thought, and volition. Our 


38 THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE. 


thinking can never transcend the physical pace of the 
nerve-force. Seldom do we think so rapidly as the nerve- 
force can move; the reason is that we have so often to 
balance opposing considerations; in other words, opposing 
streams of nervous influence come together, and keep one 
another in suspense for a longer or shorter time. The 
experiments above quoted show the minimum time of a 
mental decision. 

Another correspondence related to Time is the period 
required to produce a feeling or emotion. An appreciable 
interval must be allowed for the operation of any stimulus, 
in order that an appreciable feeling may be awakened—in 
order that we may be distinctly made conscious of a state 
of feeling. To become possessed of a sweet taste, some 
time must be allowed after the first contact with the nerve. 
Now this is in harmony with our legitimate inferences as 
to the nature of the nerve-force; the molecular changes 
in the nerve-centres, which accompany states of feeling, 
occupy an appreciable interval of time. Farther, a sensa¬ 
tion does not decay at once, when the object is withdrawn ; 
nor does the molecular activity set up in the centres 
subside at once, when the nervous prompting ceases. 

It is a safe conclusion, from our knowledge of molecular 
forces, that the molecular changes taking place in the 
nerves and the nerve-centres make an alteration of sub¬ 
stance that soon reaches a limit, incapacitating the 
nerves for farther change, until, by rest and assimilation, 


SENSATIONAL EQUIVALENTS OF EXTERNAL AGENTS. 39 


there has been a renewal of the old condition. Now to 
this there is an exact counterpart in our conscious expe¬ 
rience ; every sensation or emotion is most lively when 
first excited, becomes fainter after a time, and at last is so 
completely worn out that the continuation of the stimulus 
has no effect. The apparent exceptions, and the variations 
of degree, prove the rule. One of the conditions of greater 
persistence in any feeling is long previous remission; 
during a protracted interval of inaction the nerves and 
centres have been reinforced to a more than ordinary 
degree by the constant presence of nourishment, while 
no expenditure has been demanded. 

In the employment of external agents, as warmth and 
food, all will admit that the sensation rises exactly as the 
stimulant rises, until a point is reached, when the agency 
changes its character, too great heat destroying the tissues, 
and too much food impeding digestion. There is, although 
we cannot fix it with numerical precision, a sensational 
equivalent of heat, of food, of muscular exercise, of sound, 
of light; there is a definite change of feeling, a uniform 
accession of pleasure or of pain, corresponding to an eleva¬ 
tion of temperature of 10°, 20°, or 30°. So for each set 
of circumstances, there is a sensational equivalent of 
alcohol, of odours, of music, of spectacle. 

It is this definite relation between outward agents and 
the human feelings that renders it possible to discuss 
human interests from the objective side, which is alone 



40 THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE. 


accessible. We cannot read the feelings of our fellows ; we 
merely presume that like agents will affect them all in 
nearly the same way. It is thus that we measure men’s 
fortunes and felicity by the numerical amount of certain 
agents, as money, and by the absence or low degree of 
certain other agents, the causes of pain and the depressors 
of vitality. And although the estimate is somewhat 
rough, this is not owing to the indefiniteness of the sensa¬ 
tional equivalent, but to the complications of the human 
system, and chiefly to the narrowness of the line that 
divides the wholesome from the unwholesome degrees 
of all stimulants. 

The simplest term that we can employ for a mental 
state is a shock) a word equally applicable to the bodily 
side and to the mental side. A sudden stimulation of the 
eye, the ear, the skin, the nose, is called a shock, from 
its mere outward or physical aspect; it is also called a 
shock mentally, not because the mental consciousness re¬ 
sembles a material thing operating on a surface of sense, 
as a ringing bell, but because there is a rapid transition 
from quiescence to excitement; in which circumstance 
there is an accurate parallelism between the otherwise 
distinct physical and mental facts. 

The special modes of our sensations show many curious 
correspondences of the physical and the mental. I select 
the more prominent., In the first place, let us reflect upon 
the ordinary experience of disease, into wdiieh mental 


ACUTE AND MASSIVE SENSATION. 


41 


symptoms enter as a regular concomitant. There are 
certain tissues that, from deficiency of nerves, are but 
little sensitive, as the bones, nails, hairs, &c.; there being 
a gradation in this respect according to the extent of 
connection with the brain. Now, when any derangement 
operates upon the brain, directly or indirectly, the physician 
looks for definite corresponding mental symptoms. The 
state of the mind is dictated by the state of the brain. As 
an example, note the mental symptoms of typhus fever, 
summed up in the phrase “ febrile oppression.” “ There is 
great inaptitude for the exertion of the power of thought, 
or of motion. The expression of the face is dull and 
heavy, absent, puzzled ; the patient has the appearance of 
a person made stupid by drink, &c.” In short, the mind 
is completely at the mercy of the bodily condition ; there 
is no trace of a separate, independent, self-supporting, 
spiritual agent, rising above all the fluctuations of the cor¬ 
poreal frame. The medical practitioner assumes that to 
every mental change there corresponds a physical change ; 
he is, to this extent, a materialist. 

There is an interesting correspondence between the 
physical and the mental, in regard to a marked distinction 
among the sensations, in all the senses, between the acute 
and the voluminous or massive. A sharp prick in the 
finger, or a hot cinder, yields acute sensations ; the contact 
of the clothiug of the entire body, or a warm bath, yields 
voluminous or massive sensations. Now it is observable 


42 THE CONNEXION VIEWED AS CORRESPONDENCE. 


that an acute sensation is due to an intense stimulus on 
a small surface; a massive sensation to a gentler stimulus 
over an extended surface. The contrast is noticeable in 
every one of the senses. A gas-flame gives an acute 
feeling; the diffused sunlight gives a massive feeling. 
A high note upon the flageolet is acute ; a deep bass note 
on the violoncello or the organ is massive. The sea, the 
thunder, the shouting of a multitude are voluminous or 
massive from repetition over a wide area. Taste is acute, 
digestive feeling is massive. Thus thoroughly does the 
mere manner of external incidence determine one of the 
most notable distinctions among our states of feeling. 


CHAPTER IV. 

GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY.* 

We shall now give an account of the most general laws 
of connexion of Mind and Body. This is a difficult sub¬ 
ject, and far from being mature ; yet enough is known to 
gratify curiosity, and to impart useful lessons. 

We have already seen grounds to believe that for every 
mental shock, every awakening of consciousness, every 
mental transition, there must be a concomitant nervous 
shock ; and as the one is more or less intense so must be 
the other. Such is the -most general circumstance that we 
are able to assign regarding the connexion. Although a 
very important point to establish, yet this is too vague to 
satisfy us. 

Mind is now generally admitted to have a three-fold 
aspect,—three different functions—expressed by Feeling 
(including Emotion), Will or Volition, and Thought or 
Intellect. These are a trinity in unity ; they are charac¬ 
teristic in their several manifestations, yet so dependent 

* Of three papers contributed to the Fortnightly Review, in 1865, two 
were occupied in bringing forward the chief views here advocated 
respecting the physical side of the Feelings, the Will, and the Intellect ; 
and a third contained a Historical Sketch of the Theories of the Soul, of 
which the last chapter is an expansion. 


44 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 


among themselves, that no one could subsist alone; neither 
Will nor Intellect could be present in the absence of Feel¬ 
ing ; and Feeling manifested in its completeness carries 
with it the germs of the two others. Hence, although, in 
tracing out the bodily accompaniments of mind, we shall 
view the three powers in separation, we may expect to find 
certain great laws prevading the whole. 

THE FEELINGS. 

We all know pleasure and pain, and we are familiar with 
states of excitement that are neutral or indifferent. 
When Feeling is opposed to Will and to Thought, it is 
most characteristically represented by pleasures and pains ; 
these are never confounded with Thought, and although 
they are motives to the Will, they do not make up the 
Will. But there are many occasions when we are Excited, 
roused, or rendered conscious, without being exactly pleased 
or pained: and when we are not properly either willing or 
thinking. Such is a mere shock of surprise; such also 
are the excitements that often accompany the waning 
of our proper pleasurable and painful states. After the 
pain of a fright has passed away, there remains a state 
of Feeling, as neutral excitement. Now there are laws 
common to Feelings generally; and laws referring to 
pleasures and pains particularly. 

Next to the vague statement that every mental shock 
is accompanied by a corresponding nervous shock, is the 


MENTAL SIDE OF RELATIVITY. 


45 


law that assigns a physical counterpart to the most funda¬ 
mental and general attribute of the mind, commonly 
termed the law or principle of Relativity. 

Law of Relativity. 

(Applies both to Feeling and to Thought.) 
Change of impression is necessary to our being conscious. 

First, on the Mental Side :— 

It is a familiar observation that an unvarying action on 
any of our senses has, when long continued, the same effect 
as no action at all. We are not conscious of the pressure 
of the atmosphere. An even temperature, such as that 
enjoyed by the fishes in the tropical seas, leaves the mind 
an entire blank as regards heat and cold. The feeling 
of warmth is not an absolute, independent, or self-sus¬ 
taining condition of mind, but the result of a transition 
from cold; the sensation of light supposes a transition 
from darkness or shade, or from a less degree of illumi¬ 
nation to a greater. To use a familiar illustration, a 
watchmaker is not conscious of the unintermitted ticking 
of his clocks; but were they all suddenly stopped, he 
would at once become aware of the blank. 

We should be astonished if a law so pervading had not 
been frequently remarked and expressed in literature. It 
has been recognized many times in forms more or less 
definite. One of the most definite expressions of the law 
was given long ago by Hobbes—“ It is almost ” (he should 
have said altogether) “all one for a man to be always 


46 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 


sensible of one and the same thing, and not to be sensible 
at all of anything.” 

The principle has been recognized more fully in its 
application to the emotions. People are generally aware 
that the first shock of transition from sickness to health, 
from poverty to abundance, from ignorance to insight, 
is the most intense; and that, as the memory of the 
previous condition fades away, so does the liveliness 
of the enjoyment of the change. Shakespeare speaks 
of the miser’s looking but rarely at his hoards for fear of 
“ blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure ; ” and makes 
the versatile Prince Hal say that— 

If all the year were playing holidays, 

To sport would be as tedious as to work. 

The blessings of leisure, retirement, and rest, are pleasant 
only by contrast to previous toil and excitement. The 
incessant demand for novelty and change, for constant 
advances in wealth, in knowledge, in the arrangements 
of things about us,—attest the existence and the power 
of the law of Relativity in all the provisions for enjoy¬ 
ment. It is a law that greatly neutralizes one part of the 
advantages of superior fortune, the sense of the superiority 
itself; but leaves another part untouched, namely, the 
range, variety, and alternation of pleasures. 

It is beyond my present limits to show how the principle 
of Relativity appears in all the Fine Arts under the name 
of Contrast, how it necessitates that in science and in 


PHYSICAL SIDE OF KELATIYITY. 


47 


every kind of knowledge there should be a real negative 
to every real notion or real proposition ; straight—curved; 
motion—rest; mind—extended matter or extended space; 
how, in short, knowledge is never single but always double 
or two-sided, though the two sides are not always both 
stated. I must be content with this very brief illus¬ 
tration of the principle itself, and now advert to the 
physical counterpart. 

Secondly, on the Physical side. 

The chief point here is, to conceive by what arrangement 
of the material organization a continued agency ceases to 
produce that amount and kind of nervous action requisite 
for consciousness. 

One fact of the nervous action has already been 
noticed. The nerve-fibres and corpuscles, on being stimu¬ 
lated, undergo a process of change, whereby their power 
is gradually exhausted; in consequence of which they 
need remission and repose. Hence, the first moments of 
a stimulus are always the freshest, and give birth to the 
most vivid degrees of consciousness. This is the condition 
more especially requisite for maintaining a state of plea¬ 
surable sensibility. The nervous system should be duly 
refreshed or invigorated by nourishment and repose, 
and never pushed in any part to the extreme limits 
of exhaustion. The same condition applies to our power 
of active energy in every department, whether intellectual, 
voluntary, or emotional. Power is at the maximum, under 


48 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 


a fresh start of renovated nerves, and fails as we approach 
the point of exhaustion. There are certain exceptional 
manifestations, as in the common experience of “ growing 
warm ” to one’s work; the maximum of energy usually 
shows itself some time after commencing: an effect due 
entirely to the increased supply of blood following on a 
certain amount of exercise. 

This fact is of the highest practical importance, and 
corresponds to some of our experiences in connection with 
the law of Relativity or Change of Impression; but it 
does not amount to the full significance of that law. Two 
circumstances still remain to be accounted for. 

In the first place, the dependence of intensity of 
consciousness on the degree of the transition —as when in 
passing from one temperature, or one shade of light 
to another—is the most precise and characteristic feature 
of the Law of Relativity. Now, the degree of transition 
is connected with the degree of disturbance of the nervous 
currents, whether it be the quickening of the nerves 
from a dormant condition, or the alteration of a settled 
pace, to which the system has accommodated itself. 

Two views may be taken of the physical adjuncts of 
the state of unconsciousness, the state opposed to mental 
wakefulness. Either the nervous mass as a whole is 
quiescent, that is, unagitated by currents of nervous 
energy, which might be supposed to be the condition of 
profound slumber; or currents are still kept up, but at an 


CONSCIOUSNESS AS DEGREE OF TRANSITION. 


49 


even, settled, unaltering pace. There are facts and 
analogies in favour of both views. The mode of stating 
the ultimate physical condition of all consciousness depends 
upon how we decide between the two suppositions. 

As regards the first, it would seem natural to suppose 
that the nerves pass from the state of perfect repose to 
a state of greater or less activity or excitement, according 
as they are roused by stimulation, and that we are made 
conscious accordingly ; while the remission of the stimu¬ 
lus, and their own exhaustion, tend to quiescence and 
to unconsciousness. If we had no facts pointing to a 
different conclusion, we should adopt this as the most 
conformable to all analogy. But there are facts pointing 
the other way. The nervous system is rarely allowed 
to fall into entire somnolence. In profound sleep, the 
reflex actions go on; these, however, we may disregard, 
as having detached themselves from the conscious circles. 
Still, although when awake, we keep up activity more 
or less, and are under the stimulation of several senses, yet 
we often become almost unconscious of either the activity 
or the sensations; the only thing necessary for this 
result is that these shall be for the time monotonous 
or invariable. The most likely interpretation to be put 
upon so familiar an experience would seem to be that there 
are always currents of nerve-force, but that consciousness 
disappears according as these are unvaried in their degree. 
Many of the best established facts of the system are in { 
favour of a certain low degree of nerve action as existing 

E 


50 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 


under every variety of state ; such, for example, as the 
muscular tension maintained in the most perfect sleep. 

On this hypothesis our conception is, that when all the 
currents of the brain are equally balanced, and continue 
at the same pitch—when no one is commencing, increas¬ 
ing or abating—consciousness or feeling is null, mind is 
quiescent. A disturbance of this state of things wakens 
up the consciousness for a time ; another disturbance 
gives it another fillip, and so on ; the variety of stimulus 
in the waking state forbidding the perfect equilibrium 
from being attained. In harmony with this supposition is 
the really fitful nature of the mind; the stream of con¬ 
sciousness is a series of ebullitions rather than a calm or 
steady flow. The calmness that we actually experience 
belongs to a low or moderate excitement; let there be any 
considerable intensity of feeling, and the ebullition charac¬ 
ter will start out convincingly prominent. 

In the present state of our knowledge, no certain 
decision between the two conflicting hypotheses should 
be hazarded. We must wait for an experimentum crucis, 
and perhaps the real state of the case is not accurately 
expressed by either. 

The foregoing discussion embraces the law of pure 
Relativity, Change, or Transition, as connected with mental 
wakefulness, or consciousness. But in the concrete ex¬ 
amples of the mental fact as above expressed, there is a 
farther circumstance not involved in w r hat has now been 


FADING OF SECOND IMPRESSIONS. 


51 


brought out. We have made allowance for the decay of 
an impression after a certain continuance; leaving still the 
possibility that, after a suitable remission or interruption, 
the impression may be renewed in all its fulness. 

But now, among the features of those experiences given 
from the mental side of Relativity, this stands out promi¬ 
nent, namely, that no second occurrence of any great 
shock or stimulus, whether pleasure, pain, or mere 
excitement, is ever fully equal to the first, notwithstand¬ 
ing that full time has been given for the nerves to recover 
from their exhaustion. There is a certain amount of decay 
in the force of every impression, on the after-occasions 
when it is revived. Such is the statement of the law of 
Novelty, with which we are all familiar. 

In all probability, we have here only a new and more 
complicated phase of the law of Transition. We need to 
suppose that the system accommodates itself to every new 
state of things, that a permanent trace is made (through 
the operation of the retentive power), and that under a 
fresh shock this accommodation operates by diminishing 
the interval of transition, the difference between the 
present impression and the pre-established attitudes and 
arrangements of the nervous system. 

It is needless to push this speculation beyond a general 
surmise. Until a more precise expression can be given to 
the modes of the nervous action under the single circum¬ 
stance of mere transition, permanent accommodation being 
left out of account, we cannot hope to deal with the com- 

E 2 


52 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 

plication of two circumstances. Still, a reasonable proba¬ 
bility attaches to the hypotheses of physical action that 
have now been suggested. 

LAW OF DIFFUSION. 

When an impression is accompanied with Feeling, the 
aroused currents diffuse themselves freely over the brain, 
leading to a general agitation of the moving organs, as 
well as affecting the viscera. 

Illustrative Contrast .—The so-called reflex actions 
(breathing, swallowing, &c.) are commonly said to have 
no feeling; at the same time, they are accomplished in 
a limited circuit or channel. 

Note of Explanation .—It is not meant that every 
fibre and cell can be affected at one moment, but that a 
spreading wave is produced sufficient to agitate the body 
at large. 

We have seen generally what it is that nervous action 
consists in. A stimulus on a sensitive surface affects a 
sensitive nerve. It thence proceeds to some ganglionic 
centre, there liberating a still more energetic force, which 
passes by motor nerves to muscles. The completed fact 
of a nervous shock is a muscular movement. But, owino- 
to the numerous cross connexions that make up the 
aggregate of corpuscles, or the grey central matter, the 
sensory stimulus proceeds first to one corpuscle, and then 
is diffused to others successively, until it affects a great 
many, before it reaches motor nerves - and when these 


UNCONSCIOUS AND CONSCIOUS ACTIONS. 


53 


are reached they are so numerous as to actuate a wide 
circle of movements. Now it is found that consciousness 
or feeling increases with the extent of the wave, or the 
number of the central corpuscles excited, and the con¬ 
sequent number of outward movements commenced. 
Feeling is only nascent in the case of a simple sensory 
stimulus, one passing through a limited group of corpuscles, 
and producing a simple movement. We cannot say that 
even then consciousness or feeling is absolutely non¬ 
existent ; but it begins to be decisively manifest when 
the wave spreads right and left, by the corpuscular 
crossings; and it grows with the extension of this wave. 
We assume, as a fundamental fact, that, with nervous 
action, feeling begins. We cannot draw a line between 
nervous action without feeling, and nervous action with 
feeling; we can only indicate a scale of degree. Yet, to 
all intents and purposes, there is a division of nervous 
actions into unconscious and conscious, which is illustrative 
of the general law of Diffusion. 

The reflex actions,—breathing, the movements of the 
intestines, the heart’s action, winking, &c.,—are known to 
be stimulated through the spinal cord, and its immediate 
continuations at the base of the brain; they do not 
involve the cerebral mass. The responding movements in 
the case of each of them are limited to the work to be 
done: to the chest, in breathing; to the intestines, in 
propelling the food; to the muscles of the heart, in 


54 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 


pumping the blood. These actions are unaccompanied 
with feeling. So, in touching the hand of one asleep, 
we see the hand curl up, or the arm move away. This 
is called reflex ; it is prompted through the lower centres, 
without lateral diffusion or communication, and it is 
directed to a single local group of muscles. In such 
examples, as formerly seen, the limitation is owing to 
want of force. There are ways open to the brain; 
but they are not entered at the instance of a very 
feeble contact. Still, the fact of limitation of range 
is accompanied by the fact of unconsciousness: an 
isolated response is our evidence for contraction of the 
sphere of excitement; and such isolated responses are 
little, if at all, accompanied with feeling. 

Compare now what happens in a shock, say of acute pain, 
as from a severe smart or a wound in the same part, namely, 
the hand. A reflex influence would still operate, and give 
birth to movements of the arm ; but these would be a small 
part of the case. The bodily members everywhere are put 
in motion ; the features are contracted with a well-known 
expression; the voice sends out a sharp cry; the whole 
body is thrown into agitation. Nor do the effects stop 
with mere muscular movements; the face is flushed, 
showing that the circulation is disturbed ; the breathing is 
quickened, or the reverse; a temporary loss of appetite 
proves that the gastric secretions in the stomach are per¬ 
verted; the skin is deranged; and in the feminine con¬ 
stitution it would appear as if the mother’s milk were 


DEADENING EFFECT OF HABIT. 


55 


turned into gall. In order to cause this wide circle 
of effects, the influence of the shock, the nerve-currents 
set on, must be not merely intense in degree, but 
highly diffused in their course through the brain; being 
thus able to reach and to actuate the general system of 
out-carrying nerves. 

I have taken an extreme case to present the law in its 
utmost prominence. We might vary the illustration, and 
show that according to the strength of a feeling is the 
extent of the diffusion, as well as the intensity of the 
diffused manifestations. The rise and fall of these two 
facts, in steady concomitance, is among our most common 
experiences ; indeed, our principal means of interpreting 
the strength of one another’s feelings is derived from this 
uniformity. It would also be easy to prove that the 
apparent exceptions to the law are not real exceptions; 
that in very mild states of feeling, or under a faint degree 
of excitement, the diffused wave is not strong enough to 
excite the muscles to an open display; that the will may 
suppress the display; that habit may suppress it; 
that, when the system is so strongly pre-engaged by an¬ 
other influence as to resist a new diffusion, impressions 
are not felt (as in the insensibility to wounds in a 
battle). 

I will not dwell on these illustrations, and will merely 
add a reference to the operation of habit in deadening 
the feeling that accompanies our actions, to show that, 


56 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 


wherever this deadening influence has occurred, the diffused 
wave is proportionably contracted and suppressed. In nur 
first attempts to write, to cipher, to play on an instrument, 
to speak, or in any other work of mechanical skill,—the in¬ 
ward sense of labour and difficulty is corresponded to by 
the number of awkward and irrelevant gesticulations. On 
the other hand, in the last stage of consummated facility 
and routine, the consciousness is almost nothing; and the 
general quietude of the body demonstrates that the course 
of power has now become narrowed to the one channel 
necessary for the exact movements required. This is a 
sort of educated imitation of the primitive reflex move¬ 
ment adduced at the outset; the comparison is so striking 
as to suggest to physiologists the designation of secondary 
reflex or automatic, for the habitual movements. A man 
at a signal post, after long habit, is subjected to little 
or no nervous influence, except in the single thread of 
connection between a certain figure depicted on the eye 
and a certain movement of the hand ; the collaterals of 
the primitive wave have died away, and the accompany¬ 
ing consciousness has fallen to a barely discernible 
trace. 

The law of Diffusion might be called in to confirm the 
hypothetical account of the process of accommodation 
adverted to under Relativity. The failing intensity of 
renewed impressions might be connected with a narrower 
and weaker diffusion. Now, our study of the physical 
basis of Retentiveness (see Chap. V.) shows the tendency 


COMPREHENSIVE CONDITION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 57 

of all nervous states, by repetition, to narrow their com¬ 
pass of action, and to run into special channels of con¬ 
nexion with the states that happen to succeed them; 
substituting intellectual trains for emotional outbursts. 

It is by combining the two laws—Relativity and Diffu¬ 
sion—that we obtain the comprehensive statement of the 
physical conditions of all consciousness :— An increase or 
variation of the nerve-currents of the brain sufficiently 
energetic and diffused to affect the combined system of 
the out-carrying nerves (both motor nerves and nerves 
of the viscera). 

To all the varieties of human feeling, there correspond 
(we must suppose) varieties of diffusion in the brain, as 
there correspond, to a very considerable extent, varieties 
in the external manifestation. The outward signs are 
only a small part of the wave of effects upon muscles 
and viscera; many movements receive a mere incipient 
stimulus, too weak for producing action (not to speak of 
counter-impulses of suppression), and most of the visceral 
alterations fail to show themselves to the observer. The 
diffused wave of nervous energy is an inseparable adjunct 
of feeling. The consequent manifestations of movement 
and gesture are the universal language of feeling, and 
possess a constancy that, among all the variations of 
human character, is truly remarkable. This is what I 
previously put forward as the first argument for the 
thorough connexion of mind and body; the region of facts 


58 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY.. 

most open to vulgar observation, and yet most persis¬ 
tently overlooked by the supporters of the dissociation or 
independence of mind and matter. 

The varieties of Expression of the feelings constitute a 
study of great interest as regards our present theme ; but 
it will be enough to advert, under the following head, to 
the one broad and characteristic distinction of pleasure and 
pain. 


LAWS OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 

Pleasure and Pain have certain well known agents or 
causes, and they have also a characteristically distinct 
outcome of demeanour and expression. It is an interesting, 
although not very easy, problem to sum these up in a 
general law, or laws, of concomitance of mind and body. 
The principle that regulates feeling in general is liable to 
considerable modification according as the feeling assumes 
the character of either pleasure or pain. 

As a preliminary remark, it must be allowed that 
pleasure and pain are diametrically opposed, like cold and 
heat, up and down, debt and credit, plus and minus. The 
two are mutually destructive, they neutralize each other, 
like cold and heat. Hence the circumstances present in 
connexion with the one must be absent, if not reversed, 
in the case of the other; whatever mode of neivous 
excitement is allied with pain, its opposite must be 
allied with pleasure. Thus one explanation should 
include both. 


PLEASURES AND PAINS. 


59 


Law of Self-Conservation. 

The remark has occurred to various speculators that 
there is a close connexion between Pleasure and high 
vitality, or the vigour of the system, and between Pain 
and the causes of diminished vitality, or the feeblenesss and 
exhaustion of the system. Plato and Aristotle, in their 
views regarding Pleasure, included its being a restorative 
to nature. Kant has a few striking expressions of the same 
tendency, although their effect is greatly spoiled by the 
context:—“Pleasure is the feeling of the furtherance, 
Pain of the hindrance of life.” A very large number 
of the facts may be included in the following statement, 
which may be termed the Law of Self-Conservation :— 

States of Pleasure are connected with an increase , 
states of Pain with an abatement, of some or all of the 
vital functions. 

This principle resumes such well known experiences as 
these:—The pleasures of healthy exercise, and of rest 
after toil, the pain of fatigue; the pleasures of nourish¬ 
ment and pure air, the pains of hunger, inanition, or 
suffocation; the pleasures of health generally, the pains 
of bodily injury and disease. These few instances sum 
up the ruling facts of every one's daily life and bodily and 
mental condition. 

There are, however, a few startling exceptions. For 
example:—Cold may be painful and yet wholesome, as in 
the cold bath, and under the keen bracing air. But this 



60 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 

exception, on closer view, confirms the general rule, while 
rendering its application more definite. Cold undoubtedly 
depresses, for a time, one very sensitive organ, the Skin, 
perhaps also the Digestive Organs ; while, in moderate 
degree (that is, the degree constituting wholesomeness) 
it exalts, through the capillary circulation, the lungs, the 
heart, the muscles, and the nerves; and the contrast teaches 
us that, as far as immediate pleasure is concerned, we 
lose more by depressing the functions of the skin and the 
stomach, than we gain by increasing the power of the heart, 
the lungs, the muscles, or even the nerves themselves. 

Another very remarkable exception is the painlessness 
of* many diseases, together with the occasional absence of 
all pain, and even the presence of great comfort, in the 
sick bed and in the final decay of life. This is the case 
so often pointed to as evincing the triumph of the mind 
over the body. 

The remark already made in the case of cold, must be 
still farther extended to meet this case. The connexion 
of pleasure with vitality, and of pain with feebleness or 
loss of function, does not apply to all organs alike; some 
are comparatively insensitive, their degeneracy and decay 
seem unaccompanied with feeling; while in others 
the smallest functional derangement is productive of pain. 
Muscular weakness does not give pain, unless we are 
compelled to efforts beyond our strength; also the 
nervous system may be enfeebled as regards thinking 
power without producing discomfort, provided w 7 e are 



EXCEPTIONS TO THE LAW OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 61 

allowed perfect repose. On the other hand, anything 
that impairs nutrition, as indigestion, leads to immediate 
! discomfort; and still more decided is any partial stoppage 
of the purifying organs, as the intestines, the liver, the 
skin, the lungs, or the kidneys. There are forms of 
degeneration of the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, and 
other parts, that do not interfere with the usual 
functions ; their evil consists in preparing the wav for a 

sudden break-down. 

# 

The powers of the nervous system are various and even 
mutually opposed. Intellectual feebleness, decay of 
memory, and incapability of thought, are not painful *in 
themselves. There is, probably, a distinct power of the 
nervous system, connected with the pleasurable tone of the 
mind, which may not fail, when the intellect fails, or may 
fail, while the intellect is yet vigorous; a function very 
unequally manifested in different individuals. 

The mental effect of diminished power in the various 
organic functions is ultimately realized by some failure in 
the brain itself. Could we suppose the brain to maintain 
all its functions, derangement might exist in other 
organs without depressing the mind. Strictly speaking, 
this is an impossible concurrence. But there is some¬ 
times an approach to this situation, namely, when 
the blood, such as it is, flows in excess to the brain, 
supporting its powers at the expense of all other 
interests; an arrangement that cannot be permanent, 



62 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 


although it may last for a little time. In such a con 
tingency there is an extraordinary exaltation of mental 
function, including a hilarious and even ecstatic enjoyment. 
It is the state that narcotics may produce, for a brief 
moment, in a constitution partially wrecked; and it 
occasionally occurs in the closing hours of life. We often 
see patients in the last stage of consumption, still enter¬ 
taining the most sanguine prospects of recovery; a proof 
that, instead of being mentally depressed, they are in the 
opposite or joyous condition. On this it is remarked by 
Dr. Patrick Nicol (Medical Reports of West Riding Asylum 
for 1872, p. 199) “that blood, from which tubercle is 
deposited, appears to have that peculiar injurious property 
for the brain which excites delirium in extreme cases, it 
is productive of raving madness. 

The general principle, connecting pleasure with increase 
of vital power, receives farther confirmation from the out¬ 
ward displays under pleasure and pain; the animation, 
stir, and vigour under the one, and the drooping and 
collapse under the other. 

The primary law of feeling, that movement is in propor¬ 
tion to intensity of stimulation, is greatly modified accord¬ 
ing as the feeling is pleasurable or painful. Mere 
intensity of stimulus operates to give intensity of move¬ 
ment ; but the character of the feeling as pleasure, as pain 
or as neutral excitement, must also be taken into account. 
The designations for pleasure are very significant of the 



STIMULUS OF AN ACUTE SMART. 


63 


difference : the epithets—lively, animated, gay, cheerful, 
hilarious—are expressive of unusual activity; the epithets— 
sad, miserable, woe-begone, depressed, sorrowful, dejected, 
crest-fallen,—suggest languor, prostration, inactivity. With 
the young, we see in especial prominence the union of the 
two facts—mental delight and bodily energy. The exami¬ 
nation of the organic functions conclusively shows that in 
a pleasurable mood these are raised in efficiency; the respi¬ 
ration is quicker, the pulse is better, the digestive func¬ 
tions are exalted. In depression and pain, all is reversed. 

An apparent exception to the law occurs in the stimu¬ 
lating effects of an acute smart, and in the contortions 
and struggling of pain generally. This, however, is no real 
exception, as the following considerations will show. 

In the first place, many painful shocks are simply 
and solely depressing ; they have not even the pretence 
or appearance of rousing the energies. A blow on the 
shin is utterly prostrating ; the irritation of a raw wound 
has much the same effect. Certain parts of the body, on 
being squeezed, compressed, or tortured, yield an intense 
pain that at once quenches all the energies. Cold, in its 
painful forms, excepting, perhaps, the contact with a small 
congealed surface, which resembles a scald, is mainly 
depressing ; when it re-acts to exalt the functions, its 
painful character disappears. Privation, calamity, sever¬ 
ance of ties, shame, remorse, are accompanied with general 
prostration of the energies. 



G4 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 


In the next place, the vehement muscular stimulation 
due to acute pains can be shown to be accompanied with 
loss of power in the organic functions ; it is thus a mere 
spasmodic display, the result of a spendthrift energy. 
The stomach, the heart, the lungs, are all depressed, 
to support a wasteful exertion of muscle. 

That the exertion is forced and factitious is farther 
proved by the lassitude that succeeds; the muscles them¬ 
selves show 7 an exhaustion very different from what would 
follow on a similar amount of healthy exertion, or in the 
excitement of joy.* 

Still, an acute smart is one mode of temporarily 
raising the energies ; the acuteness implying that the 
pain is limited to a very small circle of nerves, so 
that the injurious effects are confined, while the 
stimulus suffices to arouse a wave of force-bearing nerve- 
currents. The light smart of a horse-w 7 hip is enough to 
waken the energies, without damaging the vitality. The 
pain of a flogging, which multiplies smarts of still 
greater intensity, is utterly exhausting to the whole 
system. 

* There have occurred many instances of death, or mental derangement, 
from a shock of grief, pain, or calamity ; this is in accordance with the 
general law. Instances are also recorded of death and insanity from 
excessive joy; but they are so rare as to have the character of exceptions. 
Extreme intensity of shock, whatever be its character, is unhinging ; 
but there is a wide difference in the consequences, according as it is the 
intensity of pain or the intensity of pleasure. From the one shock, 
people, as a rule, recover slowly and with difficulty ; from the other, 
they recover rapidly and easily. 


EXPRESSION OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 


65 


In this law of Pleasure and Pain, we have the key to 
the leading varieties of Expression ol the Feelings. The 
organs of expression by movement are primarily the 
features, next the voice, lastly the movements and gestures 
of the body at large—head, trunk, and extremities. In 
pleasurable emotions, these are unquestionably rendered 
active; the grimaces, gestures, and attitudes, show an 
accession of active power. The notable circumstances in 
this display are the general erection of the body, the 
opening up of the features, the powerful exercise of the 
voice; all showing that the extensor muscles, which 
are by far the largest, are strongly stimulated. When 
we have surplus energy to expend, we stretch and 
extend the body in preference to bending and relaxing 
it; the weight of the body itself is borne in the one 
case and not in the other. Any additional strain, as 
in walking, lifting weights, rowing a boat, is borne by 
the extensor muscles. It is the size of these that makes 
the muscular figure, the fulness of the calves, the thighs, 
and the hips. 

On the other hand, pain (not violently acute), dejection, 
depression, leads to the relaxation of all these powerful 
muscles ; hence a general stooping and collapse of the 
figure, showing that the springs of muscular force have 
dried up. The difference of the two situations, as regards 
the carriage of the whole body, is most marked. Compare 
the victor in a triumph with one of his captives—the 
attitude of the beater with the beaten. And as regards 


66 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 

the face, how much is suggested by the one descriptive 
trait—“ his countenance fell ” ! 

To this general law we find a remarkable exception that 
puzzled the great physiologist, Muller of Berlin, and was 
left unsolved by Sir Charles Bell. It refers to the expres¬ 
sion of the Face. While the movements under pleasure 
are obvious and energetic—the raising of the eye-brows, 
the drawing outwards of the angles of the mouth; there 
are also some apparently energetic movements charac¬ 
teristic of pain—the lowering of the eye-brows, the 
wrinkling the forehead, the drawing down of the angle of 
the month, the pouting of the lower lip. Now, to have 
one set of muscles acting strongly under pleasure, and 
another set acting strongly under pain, would merely be 
two modes of activity; it would not represent opposition or 
contrariety. Yet pleasure and pain are as opposite as heat 
and cold. What causes the one arrests or destroys the 
other; and no theory of the physical accompaniments 
is complete that fails to bring out this contrariety. It 
would be a self : contradictory account of solvency and 
insolvency, to say that one was property in the funds, and 
the other property in land ; and there is an equal contra¬ 
diction in having muscles of pleasure and muscles of pain. 

One way of diminishing the difficulty is to carry out 
a little farther the foregoing contrast of the attitudes 
in pleasure and in pain — the one erect the other 
collapsed. In addition to remitting the powerful exertion 


MOVEMENTS OF THE FACE IN PAIN. 


67 


of extending the body, one might suppose the flexor 
muscles exerted to make it still more thoroughly collapse, 
to distend to the utmost the strong erecting muscles. Now, 
one effect of this would be to release the muscular 
currents, and to set free the blood and the nerve-force in 
favour of the other interests of the system,—Digestion, &c., 
which are the first to suffer in great pain or in dejection of 
mind. The cost of the flexor effort is but small, and the 
return in the liberation of the nervous and muscular 
currents might more than compensate for that cost. 
The contrariety of the two states would be saved, while 
there would still be an active prompting under pain. 

Applying this explanation to the Face, we should have 
to consider whether the muscular opposition in it could 
show, in the one case, the exertion of powerful muscles, and 
in the other, their relaxation by the operation of those of 
smaller calibre. A slight exertion of the small muscle that 
corrugates the eye-brows, may be supposed to perfect the 
relaxation of the more powerful muscle of the scalp that 
raises the eye-brows; a small stream of energy in the 
muscle surrounding the mouth relaxes more thoroughly 
the strong zygomatic muscles, and the buccinator, which 
are distended in smiling and laughter. By the employ¬ 
ment of a slight force, we may be supposed to release a 
greater quantity; so that, after all, the positive exertion of 
those specific muscles of pain would merely aid in re¬ 
nouncing muscular energy on the whole. We should thus 
assign as the reason why a forced “ sadness of the coun- 

F 2 


68 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 


tenance makes the heart better,” that, by the employment 
of a certain amount of stimulus, we more thoroughly abate 
the stimulation ol the moving organs at large, and allow 
blood and nervous force to pass to the enfeebled viscera— 
the digestion, the lungs, the heart, the skin—by whose 
amelioration the mental tone is decisively improved.* 

* A new turn has been given to the explanation of the facial attitudes 
under pleasure and pain, first by Mr. Spencer, in the new edition of his 
Psychology, and next in Mr. Darwin’s recent work on Expression. The 
novelty lies in applying the doctrine of Evolution, or inheritance, to 
account for the more special and characteristic modes of expression of 
the face, as, for example, frowning, smiling, pouting, and depressing 
the comers of the mouth. The same doctrine is also applied to 
account for the expression of the more marked passions, as fear, love, 
anger. 

It does not lie within the plan of this work to discuss the details of 
the human feelings, either in their internal characters, or in their out¬ 
ward display ; nor is it my purpose to enter into the merits of the 
doctrine of Evolution as applied to the mind. So far as I have here 
gone, in assigning the most general laws of connexion of mind and body, 
I am not at variance with any views set forth by these two great 
authorities, although I have given far more prominence than either of 
them to the law that connects Pleasure with an accession of vital 
Power, and Pain with depressed vitality. As regards my first law—called 
the law of Diffusion—both Mr. Spencer and Mr. Darwin have treated it 
under different phraseology, but in substantially the same way. It is 
the third of Mr. Darwin’s three Laws for explaining the phenomena of 
expression—termed by him the law of the “ direct action of the excited 
nervous system.” 

Mr. Darwin furnishes incidentally many striking illustrations and 
confirmations of the Law of Pleasure and Pain. Among the appear¬ 
ances of protracted grief, he remarks—“ The circulation becomes 
languid ; the face pale ; the muscles flaccid; the eyelids droop ; the 
head hangs on the contracted chest; the lips, cheeks, and lower jaw all 
sink downwards from their own weight.” (p. 178.) Let any one 
compare this with the expression of a bride and bridegroom at the 
beginning of their honeymoon. 

Mr. Darwin’s second law, called by him the principle of Antithesis, 



LAUGHTER AND SOBBING. 


69 


An examination, after Sir Charles Bell, of the two great 
convulsive outbursts—Laughter and Sobbing—gives an 
unequivocal support to the law; the one signifies in 
all its points the accession of vital force ; the other 
equally signifies loss, failure, or deprivation of energy. 
“ The whole expression of a man in good spirits is exactly 
the opposite of one suffering from sorrow” (Darwin, p. 213). 
In both cases there may be energetic displays: but while 
the energy of laughter leaves no sting behind, the energy 
of convulsive grief is succeeded byutter prostration. 

The law now illustrated is named the Law of Self-con- 
servation, because without it the system could not be 
maintained. Inasmuch as we follow pleasure and avoid 
pain, if pleasure were injurious and pain wholesome, we 
should soon incur entire shipwreck of our vitality, as we 
often partially do, through certain tendencies that are 
exceptional to the general law. 


occasionally leads him to exemplify the opposing effects of Pleasure and 
Pain, as one of the various forms of Antithesis, or the tendency to pass 
from one expression to its opposite, even although the opposing mental 
state would not generate that opposed expression. The principle of 
Opposition has been recognized in the text under two forms—first, the 
fundamental law of Pleasure and Pain (Self-Conservation), and secondly, 
the employment of the small flexor muscles to complete the contraction 
of the powerful extensors, and secure a more perfect attitude of repose 
and renunciation of nervous stimulus. 

The violent contortions of acute pain are referred by Mr. Darwin to 
inherited habits of exertion for getting rid of pain. He would even 
regard the excited movements of animals under delight as partly 
associations with hunting and the search for food ; although he freely 
admits that the state of pleasure is itself accompanied with increased 
vigour of the circulation and the nerve-force. 


70 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 


Law of Stimulation or Exercise. 

To stimulate or excite the nerves , with a due regard to 
their condition , is'pleasurable; to pass this limit, painful. 

The mere presence of nourishment, that is, blood, does 
not evoke all the nervous activity that the blood can pay 
for, and the nerves maintain with safety ; the case is 
rather that the blood yields up force at the instance of 
stimulated nerve-currents. Now this stimulation, when in 
the proper degree, is connected with pleasure, while there 
is a degree that is always painful; both points varying 
with the condition of the individual. 

If we commence the illustration from the side of Pain, 
we may notice as two leading circumstances, (1) Conflict, 
and (2) Intensity. 

First. To say that all conflicting stimulations are pain¬ 
ful, is merely to state a consequence of the former position. 
Conflict is waste of vital power, and is likely to be accom¬ 
panied by a depression of the mental tone. This simple 
and obvious maxim sums up a wide experience; it includes 
the pleasures of harmony and the pains of discord; the 
pleasures of a free scope to all our impulses and the pains of 
constraint, obstruction, and thwarted aims; the pleasure of 
discovering similarity, agreement, consistency, and unity, 
the pains of inconsistency and contradiction. 

Secondly. As regards intensity. Violent, excessive, and 
sudden stimulations induce pain on various grounds. In 
opposition to the law that connects pleasure with vital 


PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF PAIN. 71 

energy, they cause a momentary exhaustion of the power 
of the nerves affected ; and they may further he considered 
as originating a conflict with the prevailing currents of the 
brain, which do not adjust themselves at once to the new 
impetus. Thus though, on the general principle of rela¬ 
tivity, they waken up a strong feeling, they sin against 
the conditions of 'pleasurable feeling. 

Conflict and Violence, then, are two principal modes of 
painful stimulation, and explain a very considerable num¬ 
ber of our pains. In most, if not in all, of the painful 
sensations of three of the senses—namely, Touch, Hearing, 
and Sight—the pain is either discord or excess. The 
smarting acuteness of a blow on the skin, of a railway 
whistle close to the ear, of a glare of light—are due to the 
mere degree or excess of the stimulus. In hearing and in 
sight, there are, in addition, the pains of discord. In the 
two remaining senses. Taste and Smell, we cannot make the 
same affirmation. We do not know what is the mode of 
nervous action in a bitter taste, as quinine or soot; and we 
cannot say that the transition from sweet to bitter is a 
transition from moderate stimulus to an excessive one. It 
may be that the power of the nerve is exhausted under a 
different kind of influence from mere violence of stimula¬ 
tion ; .but no certain knowledge exists on the subject. The 
same remarks apply to smell. 

These observations on the negative aspect of stimulation 


72 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 


—the aspect of pain—contain by implication the positive 
aspect. Stimulation, as such, is pleasurable. “ Man 
loves sensation,” said Aristotle. For the eye to see, for 
the ear to hear, for the skin to touch, are in themselves 
agreeable. We cannot affirm, with respect to the ordinary 
gratification of the five senses, that they increase vitality 
—they may do so slightly ; we can say only that they 
draw upon the vitality to maintain nerve* currents that 
give pleasure. It is agreeable to spend a certain portion 
of the forces of the system in nervous electricity; it 
is not agreeable to push this expenditure beyond a 
certain point. And when the stimulation has passed 
this point, degenerating into pain, the pleasurable tone 
can be restored only by replenishing the vital power, 
according to the principle that connects pleasure with 
vitality. 

I may remark, as confirming all that has been said, 
what is our common experience and practice with regard 
to pleasure, namely, the great value of the stimulants that 
are not intense but voluminous —that moderately affect a 
large sensitive surface, or many nerves at once : a familiar 
instance is furnished by the warm bath; another is the 
music of a full band. The same happy effect springs 
from change or variety; the stimulation is multiplied, 
and no one part pushed to exhaustion. 

The last point that I will advert to is the obscure sub¬ 
ject of Narcotic stimulants—alcohol, tea, tobacco, opium 


THEORY OF PUNISHMENT. 


73 


and the rest. These operate a very little way, if at all, in 
giving new vitality; they draw upon our vitality, even 
till it is much below par, postponing the feeling of depres¬ 
sion till another day. It is probable that the influence of 
the narcotics is complicated, and not the same for all. We 
may safely say respecting them, that they are the extreme 
instance of the principle of Stimulation, as contrasted with 
the principle of vital conservation ; they are the large con¬ 
sumers, not the producers, of vitality; they expend our 
stock of power in nerve-electricity in a higher degree, and 
with a more dangerous licence, than the ordinary stimu¬ 
lants of the senses. 

The physical theory of Pleasure and Pain has a direct 
bearing on Punishment and Prison Discipline. I happened 
to be present at a debate on that subject, in one of the 
sections of the British Association, at the Manchester 
meeting in 1861. The speakers were bent upon suggest¬ 
ing modes of punishment, painfully deterring, and yet not 
injurious to the convict’s health. I could not help 
remarking, from my conviction of the doctrine now ex¬ 
pressed, that the object aimed at is all but a contradiction. 
There is, if any, the barest margin between the infliction 
of pain and the destruction of vital power. If the first 
of the two maxims above stated (the connexion of pleasure 
with vital conservation, &c.,) expressed the whole truth, 
there would be no margin at all; but under the second 
maxim (Stimulation), there might be room to operate 


74 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 

as proposed. Stimulants cannot, as a general rule, 
be said to increase vital power; they are usually on 
the verge of destroying it, and frequently do destroy 
it. Consequently, the withholding of stimulation — 
alcohol, tobacco, tea, cheerful light and spectacle, the 
sounds of busy life, society, amusing literature, &c.— 
cannot be said necessarily to abate the vital forces, and 
may be instrumental in conserving them. Nevertheless, 
if these are withheld to the extent of making them 
strongly craved for (and, if they are not, their loss does 
not punish), the state of craving is an internal conflict 
that lowers the general vitality. If the craving dies away 
after a time, the depression ceases, and so does the 
punishment. Then, again, it might seem that the appli¬ 
cation of what is 'painfully salubrious would exactly hit 
the mark ; as the cold bath, the well-ventilated and but 
moderately-heated cell, cleanliness, measured food, steady 
industry, and regularity of life. Yet unless the convict 
takes kindly to these various measures, they are more 
depressing than wholesome; and if his system does adapt 
itself, that is, if they end in reforming his constitution and 
habits, they are no longer punishment. In the debate in 
question, one of the speakers, who I believe was officially 
connected with a London prison, remarked that, as a rule, 
discharged convicts are deteriorated in constitution. The 
opposite allegation has sometimes been made ; but 
between the two I will venture to arbitrate by saying 
that, in whatever cases the confinement operates as a 


PHYSICAL BASIS OF THE WILL. 


7o 


serious punishment, the deterioration is almost certain. 
The same speaker observed that corporal punishment has 
this advantage over imprisonment—that, while it is a 
severe deterring smart, it does not to the same degree 
inflict permanent damage. * 


* The two modes of punishing- by physical torture, are severe 
muscular strain (hard labour, the crank, tread-wheel) and flogging. 
The one operates upon the nerves through the muscular tissue, the 
other through the skin. There is no intention of inj uring either the 
muscles or the skin in themselves ; the sole object is to produce a 
painful condition of the nerves. Yet, as it is hardly possible, in severe 
punishments, to avoid permanent damage to the intermediate tissue— 
muscle or skin—some plan might be devised for affecting the nerves 
alone. Recourse might be had to Electricity. By electrical shocks and 
currents, and especially by Faraday’s Magneto-electric machine, which 
constantly breaks and renews the currents, any amount of torture 
might be inflicted ; and the graduation might be made with scientific 
precision. How far the nerves would suffer permanent injury by a 
severe application of electricity is still a matter for inquiry ; probably 
not more than by an equal amount of suffering through the muscular or 
skin punishments ; while, at all events, the damage would be confined 
to the nervous tissue. The punishment would be less revolting to the 
spectator and the general public than floggings, while it would not be 
less awful to the criminal himself ; the mystery of it would haunt the 
imagination, and there would be no conceivable attitude of alleviating 
endurance. The terrific power exercised by an operator, through the 
lightest finger touch, would make more deeply felt the humiliating 
prostration of the victim. 

If capital punishments are to be permanently maintained, much 
could be said for discarding strangulation, and substituting an electric 
shock. But there being a growing opinion unfavourable to the extinction 
of life, as a mode of punishment, the combination of imprisonment with 
electric inflictions could be graduated to a severity of endurance that 
should satisfy all demands for retribution to offenders. It was remarked 
by Lord Romilly that imprisonment with periodic floggings would be 
far worse than immediate execution. The idea would be too painful to 
the community at large ; while a more refined application of pain would 
pass unheeded, except by the sufferer. 


76 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 




THE WILL. 

The Will, volition, or voluntary action is, on the out¬ 
side, a physical fact; animal muscle under nervous 
stimulation is one of the mechanical prime movers; the 
motive power of muscle is as purely physical as the 
motive power of steam; food is to the one what fuel 
to the other. The distinguishing peculiarity of o 
voluntary movements is that they take their rise in 
k eeling, and are guided by Intellect; hence, so far 
A\ill is concerned, the problem of physical and mental 
concomitance is still a problem either of Feeling or of 
Intellect. The extension and improvement of our voluntary 
power is one large department of our education ; and the 
process of education is wholly included under the Intellect. 


I shall confine myself, then, as regards the Will to a short 
statement of the fundamental processes involved in it, 
one of which has just been before us under the Feelings, 
and will again appear as playing a part in the Intellect! 
In the Will altogether I reckon up three elements; two 
primitive, instinctive, or primordial, and the third a process 
of education or acquirement. 


The first primordial element is called the Spontaneous 
Energy or Surplus Activity of the system, or the dis¬ 
position of the moving organs to come into operation 
of themselves previous to, and apart from, the stimulation 
of the senses or the feelings ; the activity being increased 





SPONTANEOUS ENERGY. 


77 


when such stimulation concurs with the primitive 
spontaneity. I think there is evidence to show that the 
profuse activity attendant on health, nourishment, youth, 
and a peculiar temperament called the active temperament, 
springs in a very great degree from inherent active power, 
with no purpose at first, but merely to expend itself; 
and that such activity gradually comes under the guidance 
of the feelings and purposes of the animal. It is the 
surplus nervous power of the system discharging itself 
without waiting for the promptings of sensation. In 
the course of education the spontaneity is so linked 
with our feelings as to be an instrument of our well¬ 
being, in promoting pleasures and removing pains. 
The voice by mere spontaneity sends forth sounds, the 
ear controls and directs them into melody, and the 
wants of the system generally make them useful in other 
ways. 

Mere spontaneity, however, would not give us all that 
we find in the impulses of the Will. Being the overflow 
of vital power, it would show itself only whenever and 
wherever there is such an overflow. We want a kind 
of activity that shall start forth at any time when 
pleasure is to be secured, or pain to be banished, and 
that shall be directed to the very points where these 
effects can be commanded. 

For such a power we must refer to the great funda- 


78 GENERAL LAWS OF ALLIANCE OF MIND AND BODY. 

mental law of Pleasure and Pain—the law that connects 
Pleasure with increase of Yital Power, Pain with 
the diminution of Yital Power. This law we may look 
upon as in many respects the foundation, the main¬ 
stay, of our being ; it is the principle of self-conservation 
—the self-regulating, self-acting impulse of the animal 
system. When anyhow we come into a mood of joyful 
elation, the physical state corresponding is an exaltation 
of vital energy to the muscles, the organic functions, one 
or other, or both ; and that exaltation is an increase of 
the activity that is bringing the pleasure. The first act 
of masticating a morsel of food develops a pleasurable I 
feeling to the conscious mind, and a concurrent stimulus 
of heightened activity to the body; the heightened 
activity vents itself in the parts actually moving at the 
time—the masticating organs, the cheeks, jaw, and tongue, 
which in consequence proceed with redoubled vigour, the 
pleasure thus feeding itself. In that connexion we have, 
as I believe, the deepest foundation of the will. On the, 
other hand, if, in the course of energetic movements of 
mastication, a false step occurs, the teeth embracing 
by mistake the skin of the lip or the tongue, there is 
mentally a smart of pain, and physically, I think, a 
destruction of nervous power through the shock, and the 
destruction of power is at once and directly a cessation 
of the active currents impelling the mouth and the jaws. 

Such I conceive to be the groundwork of Yolition, 




PRINCIPAL FOUNDATION OF THE WILL. 


79 


greatly, but never entirely, overlaid in mature life by a 
large superstructure of acquired connexions between 
feelings and specific movements. Without some such 
foundation I see no way of beginning the work of voluntary 
acquisition, nothing to make our movements relevant to 
our state of feeling at the time ; moreover, it is the check 
that is always ready to step in and supersede our acquired 
habits. At any moment a burst of pleasure will raise 
our energies, a shock of pain (not being an acute exciting 
smart) will depress them ; in the one case the cause of 
the pleasure, if our over-activity, will be maintained with 
increase ; in the other case the energies are arrested, and 
if they are causing the pain, it will cease with them. 
The bursting out of a cheerful light in a dark labyrinth 
spurs us on without our going through the formality of 
what we call a resolution of the will; while a course leading 
us to darkness, strangeness, and uncertainty will be 
arrested by the mere sinking away of our energies before 
we can even begin to deliberate. Our course in life 
from first to last, although most at first, is trial and 
error, groping and feeling our way, acting somehow, and 
judging of the result; and the general tendency of the 
law in question is to sustain us when we are in a good 
track, to turn off the steam when we are in a bad track. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE INTELLECT.* 

I NOW approach the most difficult part of the subject 
of the physical basis of mind—namely, what regards the 
Intellect. That the Feelings are closely connected with 
physical manifestations is patent and undeniable. But 
Thought is at times so quiet, so far removed from bodily 
demonstrations, that we might suppose it conducted in a 
region of pure spirit, merely imparting its conclusions 
through a material intervention. Unfortunately for this 
supposition, the fact is now generally admitted, that 
thought exhausts the nervous substance, as surely as walk 
ing exhausts the muscles. Our physical framework is in¬ 
volved with thought no less decidedly than with feeling ; 
and it is requisite to define, if possible, the terms of the 
alliance. 

In the positions already advanced, with respect to the 

* This chapter may not perhaps be easily understood by readers 
unfamiliar with the theory of our Intellectual Powers. It is not 
essential to the general argument ; while it is more purely hypothetical 
and speculative than the foregoing chapter on the Feelings and the Will. 
The purpose of inserting it is to give completeness to the account of the 
most general laws of connexion of Mind and Body, and to deal with 
what must ever be the most difficult problem growing out of that 
connexion. 


FOUNDATIONS OF THE INTELLECT. 


81 


Feelings and the Will, we have also some of the physio¬ 
logical foundations of Thought. 

The First Position, named the Principle of Relativity, or 
the necessity of change in order to our being conscious, is 
the groundwork of Thought, Intellect, or Knowledge, as well 
as of Feeling. We know heat only in the transition from 
cold, and vice versd ; up and down, long and short, red and 
not red—-are all so many transitions, or changes of impres¬ 
sion ; and without transition we have no knowledge. Rela¬ 
tivity applied in this way to Thought, coincides with the 
power called Discrimination —the Sense or Feeling of 
Difference, which is one of the constituents of our Intelli¬ 
gence. Our knowledge begins, as it were, with difference ; 
we do not know any one thing of itself, but only the dif¬ 
ference between it and another thing; the present sensation 
of heat is, in fact, a difference from the preceding cold. 

The Second Position, named the Law of Diffusion,—or 
the connection of Feeling with spreading currents, as 
opposed to impulses that go the round in a single line,— 
has bearings upon Thought likewise. Taken along with 
the principle of Relativity, or Change of Impression, it 
allows us, as we shall see presently, to embody the power 
of Discrimination, or to assign its physical connexions with 
the currents of the brain. 

The Third Position had reference to the radical contrast 
of Pleasure and Pain, and was meant to bring out the con¬ 
nection between Pleasure and a rise of Vital Power, and 
between Pain and a fall of Vital Power. Although com- 

G 


82 


THE INTELLECT. 


plicated with the fact that stimulus, as well as nourish* 
ment, is requisite to quicken the nerve-currents to the 
maximum of pleasure, this principle is a clear starting- 
point for our voluntary action, otherwise without a start¬ 
ing-point ; for the will mainly consists in following the 
lead of pleasure and drawing back from the touch of 
pain. 

Our Intelligence, in the 'practical view, may be con¬ 
sidered as an enormous expansion of the range of operations 
under the First Law of Being—the Law of Self-Conserva¬ 
tion. To work for the attainment of pleasure while yet 
in the distance, and for the abatement of pain also in the 
distance; to perform actions that are only intermediate in 
procuring the one or avoiding the other: all this is but 
voluntary action enlarged in its compass by knowledge of 
cause and effect, means and end; in other words, by our 
intelligent cognizance of the order of the world. 

Intellect has long been divided into a variety of func¬ 
tions, or modes of operating, called faculties, under such 
names as Memory, Reason, Judgment, Imagination, Con¬ 
ception, and others; which, however, are not fundamentally 
distinct processes, but merely different applications of the 
collective forces of the Intelligence. We have no power 
of Memory in radical separation from the power of Reason 
or the power of Imagination. The classification is tainted 
with the fault called, in Logic, cross-division. The really 
fundamental separation of the powers of the Intellect is 


DISCRIMINATION. 


83 


into three facts called (1) Discrimination, the Sense, 
Feeling, or Consciousness of Difference; (2) Similarity, 
the Sense, Feeling, or Consciousness of Agreement; and 
(3) Retentiveness, or the power of Memory or Acquisition. 
These three functions, however much they are mingled, 
and inseparably mingled, in our mental operations, are yet 
totally distinct properties, and each the groundwork of a 
different superstructure. As an ultimate analysis of the 
mental powers, their number cannot be increased or 
diminished; fewer would not explain the facts, more 
are unnecessary. They are the Intellect, the whole In¬ 
tellect, and nothing but the Intellect. 

Let us take them in order. 

I. Discrimination. —This we have just seen is the 
intellectual aspect of Relativity, or the Law of Change of 
Impression. When any new currents are commenced, or 
when existing currents are increased or abated, we become 
mentally alive ; and if we are already conscious, a change 
comes over our consciousness. It can be easily made appa¬ 
rent that Discrimination is the very beginning of our 
intellectual life. If we are insensible to the change from 
hot to cold we are for ever disqualified from knowing the 
phenomenon of heat; to be unaffected by changes of light 
is another way of expressing blindness; to be affected, or 
made conscious, by very minute shades of colour is to be 
highly intelligent in regard to colour. Wherever a man 
is more knowing than his fellows, he sees distinctions 

G 2 


84 


THE INTELLECT. 


where they see none. The banker detects a bad note 
after it has deceived many other people. 

As to the Physical Embodiment of this fact:—When we 
consider the vast compass of our discriminative sensibility— 
the seemingly innumerable shades of our consciousness in 
correspondence with the variety of sensible appearances, 
not to speak of our emotions and inner life—we begin to 
be aware of the need of an apparatus of great range and 
complication. Take any of the senses, as Sight, and con¬ 
sider all the degrees that we can mark between total 
blackness and the highest solar refulgence. Consider next 
the colours and their shades, and we shall find that the 
sensible gradations of effect are very numerous; in a 
mind highly endowed for colour, these felt gradations 
would be counted by hundreds. Again, in the Ear, a 
musician’s discrimination of pitch extends, perhaps, to 
several hundred sounds. Our discrimination of articulate 
sounds is co-extensive with the combined alphabets of all 
the languages known to us. 

Assuming, as we have found reason to do, that every new 
impression on the sense is an alteration of the currents 
along the track of the nerves—both the main channel and 
the collaterals of the diffusion—we are led to believe that 
consciousnesses varied in two ways. First, according to 
the ingress made use of, or the particular organ and the 
particular nerves employed. Thus, from the eye to the 
ear is a perceptible transition and a new" phase of con- 


VARIETIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 


85 


sciousness. So in touch, in taste, and smell, we have a 
characteristic consciousness for each sense through all the 
varieties of sensation of that sense. We should never 
confound a colour with a taste. Nay more : in the higher 
senses, and especially in Sight and in Touch, we have 
differences of consciousness according to the part of the 
organ affected ; if it were not so, we should all be in the 
proverbial position of not knowing the right hand from 
the left. 

In the second place, Consciousness is obviously varied 
according to the energy, or other peculiarity, of the im¬ 
pression made on the same organ, or part of an organ, and 
the same nerve. A greater impression makes a greater 
feeling. This of course is what we are prepared for on 
any hypothesis. The currents are made more intense, 
and a change of nervous intensity is a change of con¬ 
sciousness. In the senses, however, we have qualitative 
differences of sensation, which are more embarrassing to 
account for. To define the change of current in the optic 
fibres by red, yellow, and blue, and the subsequent course 
of diffusion, is not within our present knowledge. It has 
been supposed that there are separate fibres for the primi¬ 
tive colours, which would somewhat relieve the difficulty, 
and reduce the different modes of action to mere differences 
of intensity or degree. 

These two circumstances, namely, the separate con¬ 
sciousness of separate nerves, and the changing intensity 


86 


THE INTELLECT. 


of the currents, we may regard as the primitive modes of 
diversifying the consciousness; but it is in the countless 
combinations of these simple elements that we are to look 
for the physical concomitants of our ever-varying conscious¬ 
ness. The union of different stimulations in different fibres 
and in different degrees, would unavoidably give birth to 
a complex and modified consciousness. 

II. So much for Discrimination. Let us now glance 
shortly at Similarity, or Agreement. Besides the shock 
of difference, or change, the mind is affected by the shock 
of agreement in the midst of difference. If a certain 
sensation, as redness, is felt, and if, after we have passed to 
something else, it recurs, there is a flash of recognition, 
a re-instatement of the first experience together with a 
feeling of recognition or identification. This is the 
feeling or consciousness of Agreement; it also is a great 
intellectual foundation. Coupled with Discrimination, 
it exhausts the meaning of what we call knowledge ; 
to know anything, as a tree, is to discriminate it from all 
differing objects, and identify it with all agreeing objects. 
The extension of our knowledge of the tree is the exten¬ 
sion of our sense of its differences and of its agreements. 
Similarity, in another view, is a great power of reproducing 
our past experience and acquisitions, an extension of the 
resources of Memory. By it, principally, we “ ascend the 
brightest heaven of invention.” We are perpetually re¬ 
minded of objects by the presence of something of 


SIMILARITY OR AGREEMENT. 


87 


a resembling kind. Looking at a cathedral, we readily 
bring to mind other cathedrals ; hearing an anecdote, 
we are almost sure to recall some one similar. Our 
reason essentially consists in using an old fact in new 
circumstances, through the power of discerning the agree¬ 
ment ; we have sown one field and seen it grow, and we 
repeat the process in another field. All this is a vast 
saving of the labour of acquisition ; a reduction of the 
number of original growths requisite for our education. 
When we have anything new to learn, as a new piece of 
music, or a new proposition in Euclid, we fall back upon 
our previously formed combinations, musical or geometrical, 
so far as they will apply, and merely tack certain of them 
together in correspondence with the new case. The 
method of acquiring by patchwork sets in early, and 
predominates increasingly. 

III. I might go on to apply the views respecting the 
cerebral structure and workings, in divining the physical 
process underlying this power of Similarity; but we shall 
be still better occupied in grappling with the remaining 
intellectual function, Ketentiveness, or Memory, whose 
explanation would make all the rest easy enough. 

It is related by the younger Scaliger that two subjects 
especially engaged the speculative curiosity of his father, 
the celebrated Julius Caesar Scaliger; these were, the 
cause of Memory and the cause of Gravity. With regard 
to the last-named of the two—the nature of Gravity—we 


83 


THE INTELLECT. 


have, since the Newtonian discovery, learned to consider 
that as a solved problem, and a good example of what 
constitutes finality in scientific enquiries : namely, when 
we have generalized a natural connexion to the utmost, 
ascertained its precise law, and traced its consequences. 
That matter gravitates—that the property called Inertia 
or Resistance, is united with the separate property of 
attraction at all distances, we accept as a fact, and, unless 
indeed we saw our way to generalizing it one step further, 
we ask no more questions. So in the subject before us. 
There are two very distinct natural phenomena, the one 
we call consciousness or mind; the other we call matter 
and material arrangements; they are united in the most 
intimate alliance. It is for us to study the nature of each 
in its own way, to determine the most general laws of the 
alliance, and to follow them out into the explanation of 
the facts in detail; and then, as with gravity, to rest and 
be thankful. 

The great scholar might, however, be forgiven for 
wondering at Memory. There is nothing marvellous in 
Nature’s having allied this and the other mental functions 
with a bodily organization; for unless it be that the facts 
called mind and the facts called material are the most 
widely contrasted facts of our experience, and that we 
have, as it were, a meeting of extremes , there is no more 
mystery in this union than in the union of Inertia and 
Gravity, Heat and Light. It is because we have some¬ 
thing beyond the usual endowments of natural things, 


PHYSICAL SEAT OF IDEAS. 


89 


in the possibility of storing up in three pounds’ weight of 
a fatty and albuminous tissue done into fine threads and 
corpuscles, all these complicated groupings that make our 
natural and acquired aptitudes and all our knowledge. If 
there were sermons in stones, we should be less astonished 
when they proceed from brains. 

Retention, Acquisition, or Memory, then, being the 
power of continuing in the mind impressions that are no 
longer stimulated by the original agent, and of recalling 
them at after-times by purely mental forces, I shall 
remark first on the cerebral seat of those renewed 
impressions. It must be considered as almost beyond a 
doubt that “the renewed feeling occupies the very same 
parts , and in the same manner as the original feeling, 
and no other parts, nor in any other manner that can be 
assigned.” 

This view is the only one compatible with our present 
knowledge of the working of the nerves, although there 
formerly prevailed and still prevail other views ; the 
doctrine of a common sensorium or cerebral closet where 
ideas are accumulated, quite apart from the recipient 
apparatus. But that view is so crude as hardly to merit 
discussion. If we suppose the sound of a bell striking 
the ear, and then ceasing, there is a certain continuing 
impression of a feebler kind, the idea or memory of the 
note of the bell; and it would take some very good reason 
to deter us from the obvious inference that the continuing 


90 


THE INTELLECT. 


impression is the persisting (although reduced) nerve- 
currents aroused by the original shock. And if that be so 
with ideas surviving their originals, the same is likely to 
be the case with ideas resuscitated from the past— 
the remembrance of a former sound of the bell. All 
observation confirms the doctrine. The mental recollec¬ 
tion of language is a suppressed articulation, ready to 
burst into speech. When the thought of an action excites 
us very much, we can hardly avoid the actual repetition, 
so completely are all the nervous circuits repossessed with 
the original currents of force. The lively remembrance of 
a pleasant relish will produce the same expression of coun¬ 
tenance, the very smack of the reality. Moreover, it has 
been determined by experiment that the persistent imagina¬ 
tion of a bright colour fatigues the nerves of sight* 

* Great consequences follow (as it seems to me) from this view of the 
physical embodiment of Intellect. There grows out of it a tendency of 
ideas to become the full reality ; as when a person strongly imagining 
a kick, can scarcely refrain from the performance. The comparative 
weakness of the nerve-currents accompanying the idea, and the superior 
force of present realities, render the manifestation unfrequent in 
waking hours, and under ordinary conditions. Any circumstances, on 
the one hand, tending to intensify the idea, or, on the ether hand, 
removing the pressure of the actual, exhibit the influence in full 
operation. The mesmeric sleep is the extreme instance ; the ideas 
suggested to the mind of the patient exclusively determine his conduct. 

No fact of the human constitution more decisively proves the con¬ 
nexion of Intellect with the nervous system and with the moving 
organs ^nd the senses. The intimacy of the alliance is shown at its 
utmost. 

This principle is a supplementary law of the Will; it is a stimulus to 
action, over and above the primary and proper motives of the "Will 
(pleasure and pain), and often leads to conduct at variance with our 
interests as represented by procuring pleasure and warding off pain 


PHYSICAL PROCESS UNDERLYING MEMORY. 91 


The comparative feebleness of remembered states or 
ideas is, we may presume, an exact counterpart of 
the diminished force of the revived currents of the 
brain. It is but seldom that the re-induced currents 
are equal in energy to those of direct stimulation at 
first hand. 

And now, as to the mechanism of RETENTION. 

For every act of memory, every exercise of bodily 
aptitude, every habit, recollection, train of ideas, 
there is a specific grouping, or co-ordination, of 
sensations and movements, by virtue ot specific 
growths in the cell junctions. 

For example, when I see a written word and, as a result 
of my education, pronounce it orally, the power lies in a 
series of definite groupings or connexions of nerve- 
currents in the nerve and centres of the eye, with currents 
in motor nerves proceeding to the chest, larynx and 
mouth; and these groupings or connexions are effected by 
definite growths at certain proper or convenient cell 
crossings. 

A complication of the principle has been greatly discussed of late, 
under the designation of the “power of the Imagination over the body; 
according to which ideas can induce healthy and morbid changes on the 
system. By thinking strongly on the hand, we affect the local circula¬ 
tion of the blood, and by persistent attention, we might set up a 
diseased action in the part. Applications of this peculiar effect have 
been suggested in medicine, and the conditions and limitations of it are 
deserving of careful study. It has been happily made use of by Mr. 
Darwin to explain Blushing. 


92 


THE INTELLECT. 


The considerations that support us in hazarding this 
proposition are such as the following:— 

In the first place, it is merely stating the mode of 
action appropriate to the structure and known workings 
of the brain. If the brain is a vast network of communi¬ 
cation between sense and movement—actual and ideal— 
between sense and sense, movement and movement, by in¬ 
numerable conducting fibres, crossing at innumerable 
points,—the way to make one definite set of currents 
induce a second definite set is in some way or other to 
strengthen the special points of junction where the two 
sets are most readily connected, so that a preference shall 
be established, and in that particular line of communi¬ 
cation. The special growths accompanying memory must 
operate at these cell or corpuscle junctions. 

Our mode of conceiving the so-called Keflex actions 
illustrates what 1 mean. A stimulus proceeds along a 
given nerve to a central point—a group of cells ; and 
there is a definite response to a certain movement, as in 
the closed hand of the sleeper. Now the higher con¬ 
nexions of mind are of the same essential character, 
though far surpassing in complication ; the system of 
freely diffused lines of communication in the brain is an 
obstacle to that ready selection of an outgoing channel; 
and there is at first much conflict and distraction, until 
circumstances shall determine preference outlets, and 
until structural growths confirm these preferences. 

The position is also fortified by the effect of diseased 


LIMITS OF ACQUISITION. 


93 


points in the brain, which are known to destroy memory, 
often sweeping away some definite class of acquisitions or 
recollections, and leaving others untouched. We have 
now on record many remarkable cases of the destruction 
of the second and third frontal convolutions of the brain 
accompanied by loss of speech, while the intellectual 
faculties generally were unimpaired. 

In the next place, Acquisition has a limit, determined 
by the amount of the nervous substance, that is, the size 
of the brain. 

We are apt to be carried away with a vague notion that 
there is no limit to acquirement, except our defect of 
application or some, other curable weakness of our own. 
There are, however, very manifest limits. We are all 
blockheads in something; some of us fail in mechanical 
aptitude, some in music, some in languages, some in 
science. Memory, in one of these lines of incapacity, 
is a rope of sand ; there must be in each case a deficiency 
of cerebral substance for that class of connexions. 

Then, again, there is a tendency in acquisitions to decay 
unless renewed. Hence, a time must come in the progress 
of acquisition when the whole available force of growth is 
needed in order to conserve what we have already got; 
when, in fact, we are losing at one end as much as we gain 
at the other. 

It is further to be remarked that much of our mental 
improvement in later life is the substitution of a better 
class of judgments for our first immature notions, these 


94 


THE INTELLECT. 


last being gradually dropped. There is not necessarily 
more room occupied in the brain by a good opinion than 
by a bad, when once the good opinion is arrived at; or by 
an elegant gesture as compared with an awkward one. 

Even taking the regular student, whose life is spent in 
amassing knowledge, we find that his memory at last, if it 
does not refuse the new burdens, gives them place by 
letting go much that has been previously learned. More¬ 
over, a wide scholarship turns into a knowledge of the 
places where knowledge is. It is only a limited range 
of ideas that any one can command at any one time ; 
although in the course of a life we may shift into several 
successive spheres of intellectual range. 

Farther, we have seen, in alluding to the power of 
Similarity or Agreement, that one acquisition is made to 
serve on many different occasions. A new word is a group 
of old articulations ; a new air to a musician, a new 
manipulation to a chemist, is merely a slight variation 
of some previous acquirement. 

Once more. In a vast number of instances, what we 
retain is not so much certain ready-made combinations, as 
the means for putting these together when required. This 
is well exemplified in the economy of names. By 
means of combining generic and specific names, two 
or three thousand words can suffice to name one hundred 
thousand plants. So in ordinary language: the suffix 
“ ness,” understood once for all, enables us to convert 
thirteen hundred adjectives into abstract nouns; so that 


ESTIMATE OF OUR ACQUISITIONS. 


95 


the recollection of these abstract nouns involves no inde¬ 
pendent effort. And, in like manner, instead of having 
in the memory trains of formed sentences for every 
occasion, we have a certain number of forms that can be 
freely accommodated to the matter we wish to express. 

And finally, the great principle of the Will is, by its 
nature, self-correcting, after trial and error. This comes 
in place of many nice adjustments, and renders a sentient 
framework superior to all other machines. It is not 
necessary to the power of imitation that a sound heard 
should at once suggest the exact vocal articulation for 
reproducing the effect: something may be at first 
suggested not quite up to the sound: the sense of dis¬ 
crepancy then checks it; other movements arise and are 
likewise checked ; and so on till the coincidence is reached. 

I will now venture upon a hypothetical comparison 
between these two things—our Acquisitions on the one 
hand, and the number of the Nervous elements of the 
brain on the other. 

A certain number of definite groupings or co-ordinations 
must be allowed to our various Instincts ; as, for example, 
the combined movements of the heart, intestines, and 
lungs, and the special modifications of them in swallowing, 
coughing, and sucking. The simplicity and the limitation 
of these acts are such as to require comparatively few 
pre-established groupings. When to the simple instincts 
of Organic Life we add the higher instincts included in our 


96 


THE INTELLECT. 


Feelings, and their embodiment in our Voluntary powers, 
and even in our Intelligence, the number is enlarged on 
a scale corresponding with the acquired aptitudes; and 
the new theory is that these higher instincts are all here¬ 
ditary, or transmitted acquisitions. 

Our Acquisitions taken as a whole represent the great 
mass of our nervous growths. I shall attempt to give a 
rough classification of them :— 

1. The simpler and earlier Voluntary Aptitudes, im¬ 
plied in the voluntary control of the various moving 
members, as the hand. We have not originally the power 
of moving any part in a definite way to execute a purpose; 
we have to associate the several movements with the 
effects to be produced. With the sight of a morsel of food, 
and the state of hunger, we associate the definite move¬ 
ment of the hand to the mouth. With the feeling of morsel 
in the mouth, we have to associate definite movements of 
the tongue and the jaw. These are groupings of a consider¬ 
able degree of complication. A visible image, with the - 
knowledge of what the vision suggests, as, for example, a 
bit of sugar, and a feeling or craving based on a recollec¬ 
tion of the past,—concur as a definite situation; and 
that situation has to be followed by a grasping move¬ 
ment of the hand, and a subsequent movement towards 
the mouth; to which succeeds a series of movements 
in the mouth itself. The exercise of the voluntary 
powers is a manifold repetition of the same fact—a 


MUSCULAR ACQUISITIONS. 


97 


definite situation followed by a definite group or series 
of movements. 

2. The Muscular Groupings in the various experiences 
of Resistance,. Size, Form, and allied properties. These 
are embodied in the hand, the arm, and the locomotive 
organs generally, and in the allied nervous centres for 
motor currents. Without the special senses, as Sight, 
these notions are very vague, showing that the provision 
for the nervous embodiment of movements is not great. 
Still we can discriminate degrees of force, by the muscles 
alone ; to every distinguishable degree there must be a 
definite and distinct nervous track; and to every associa¬ 
tion with each special degree, there must correspond an 
appropriate nervous grouping, disentangled from all other 
groupings. With every distinguishable weight we form 
some separate associations, some actions to be performed 
when that weight is felt, as in sorting, according to weight, 
heavy and light things. 

The groupings in the muscles of the Eye that corre¬ 
spond to visible motions and forms, are exceedingly 
numerous. These enter into our highest intellectual 
acquirements of visible pictures and arrangements. A 
circle is a series of ocular movements, in definite march and 
grouping; for this one effect hundreds of currents are 
excited in individual fibres and cells. 

The groupings of the Larynx, Tongue, and Mouth, for 
vocal exertions, and above all for articulate speech, are 

H 


THE INTELLECT. 


98 I 

on a vast scale. As with every simple form visible 
to the eye, so with every separate articulate sound— 
every letter in the alphabet—there is a complex series 
of situations, graduated and organized in the corre¬ 
sponding centres, whether pure motor, or motor and 
sensory combined. 

3. Although there is a propriety iu viewing the muscular 
associations as a distinct branch of our mental frame¬ 
work, they are, in point of fact, always blended with the 
special senses; and the delicacy of discrimination is far 
higher in the pure and proper senses than in the muscles 
alone. By the pure senses are meant, Touch (without 
strain or pressure), Taste, Smell, Hearing, Sight (in its 
optical part). To every discriminated sensation there is 
(we must believe) a distinct and characteristic group of 
currents, actuating a separate group of fibres and cells, 
and susceptible of being united with any definite move¬ 
ment or any other definite sensation. Now even in 
the inferior senses, the grades of discrimination are 
numerous ; in Taste and Smell, probably hundreds; in 
Hearing and Sight, thousands. In the quality of musical 
Pitch, a fine ear can discriminate a small fraction of a 
tone; in a range of seven octaves a great many separate 
sensations could be held apart without being confounded. 
If to pitch we add Intensity, Volume, and Timbre, the 
discriminations would be multiplied in proportion. Still, 
however, the discriminations held in the memory are 


ACQUISITIONS IN THE SENSES. 


99 


not so numerous as we might suppose from the delicacy 
of comparing the actual sensations. 

The Eye, by its optical function, takes in grades of 
Light and Shade, mixtures of white and dark in the 
series of Greys, and varieties of Colour. A good eye 
might have several hundreds of distinct optical grada¬ 
tions in these various effects. But the eye shows its great 
compass in the plurality of combinations of points or 
surfaces of different light, making up what are commonly 
called images: . compounds of visible form (muscular) 
and visible groupings (optical). The multitude of these 
that can be distinctly embodied and remembered would 
seem to defy computation; yet every one must have its 
own track in that labyrinth of fibres and corpuscles called 
the brain. 

4. Thus, in the muscular feelings, and in the sensations 
of the special senses, there are all these various grades 
of distinguishable states of feeling, and an enormous 
number of connexions between them in our memory of 
things and of events. Yet farther. Movements may be 
associated with sensations in every one of the senses; 
and there may be associations between each sense and 
all the others:—Touches, with tastes, smells, sounds, 
sights; Tastes, with smells, sounds, and sights; Smells,* 
with sounds and sights; and, most of all, Sounds with 
sights. What we call our knowledge of a thing is the 
union of all the sensations produced by it into a complex 

H 2 


100 


THE INTELLECT. 


idea of that thing. The idea of a shilling is a compound 
of visible appearance, sound, and touch. 

5. All these simpler combinations are themselves 
re-compounded into still higher combinations. The 
far-reaching and all-embracing acquisition, called Lan¬ 
guage, is based on the articulate groupings; these are 
formed into words, words into phrases and sentences; 
and all the while there is a process of adhesion between 
each verbal element and some object of sight or other 
sense. The vocal articulation in uttering the word 
“ sun,” the sound it makes on the ear when pronounced, 
the appearance of the thing,—are all ^united in one higher 
grouping or complex intellectual product. Words are 
thus joined to things ; trains of words are joined to 
trains of events. In learning foreign languages, words as 
sounds are joined to other words as sounds, visible 
symbols to visible symbols; trains of words in both 
capacities to other trains. As we can readily compute 
the number of woitfs making up the vocabulary of a 
language, we have a means of setting forth in a sort of 
numerical estimate the extent of our acquisitions, and 
the number of independent brain-growths that correspond 
to these. 

Every special acquirement is a re-compounding of the 
elementary groupings above sketched. A science, for 
example, such as Arithmetic, is a vast aggregate of new 


i 



SCIENTIFIC ACQUIREMENTS. 


101 


sensible groupings; the elements being our notions of 
number gained from numbered things, the ten ciphers, and 
their union in the decimal system. There is here a great 
process of economy. The multiplication table, which 
contains 144 propositions, or statements of the equivalence 
of numbers, is a weapon of indefinite power in com¬ 
putation. Still a great deal of independent acquisition 
must succeed these embodiments of the multiplication 
table; many farther rules must be learnt, with exempli¬ 
fying instances. To work vulgar and decimal fractions 
demands the forming of new and complicated ties. 
Conceive, then, the amount of distinctive nervous em¬ 
bodiment in one arithmetical fact, as “six times ten is 
sixty one hundred and forty-four such are needed for 
the table; while the table itself is really a very small 
portion of the growths in the mind of a fair arithmetician, 
even allowing for the process, so abundantly exemplified 
in science, of making the old serve in the new. 
Supposing the table were one-fiftieth of the memorial 
embodiment of any one’s Arithmetical powers; the 
nervous growths would be upwards of seven thousand 
for this on6 subject. Five more sciences of like compass 
would give more than forty thousand groupings; but 
there would be a very great condensation through un¬ 
avoidable repetitions. Still an accomplished mathe¬ 
matician might have upwards of twenty or thirty 
thousand groupings of the degree of complicacy typi¬ 
fied in the table ; there being, however, a considerable 


102 


THE INTELLECT. 


number of trains equal in length to several columns 
of the table. 

In learning an air of music, suppose the Old Hundredth 
Psalm Tune, there is a definite succession of notes. 
We may view the embodiment of such an acquisition in 
this way. The first note suggests nothing; three or four 
are needed to determine the air. With the sequence of, 
say, four notes, is associated the fifth, and at the same 
time the name and all other adjuncts of the air. A 
complex situation is thereby created, and with that the 
succeeding notes are all associated in train. About thirty 
notes are thus enchained in a fixed order ; each note 
being the associated sequel of a group of notes, or other 
mental effects, of at least three or four members. There 
are thus nearly thirty associations of some complicacy in 
this single air. A good musician has hundreds of such 
sequences ; perhaps upwards of a thousand, but not less 
than a thousand. Great allowance must be made for 
repetitions. A musical education would thus comprise 
as many as twenty thousand separate associations of small 
determining groups of notes with other notes. 

It is on this analogy that we should have to express 
the verbal memory for consecutive statements. The 
determining words of a passage—two, three, or four 
in number,—will commence the train; every new 
word is associated with a prior group of words and 
meanings. 


EMOTIONAL GROWTHS. 


103 


6. In the acquired connexions with the Feelings or Emo¬ 
tions, and in those associations of Will called the “ Moral 
Habits,” we might exemplify a distinct and somewhat 
peculiar class of growths. The number is still very great; 
as is apparent when we reflect upon the great multitude of 
things connected in our mind with pleasurable and painful 
feelings. The peculiarity lies in the greater impetus or 
power in every wave that involves either feeling or an 
exercise of will. To this impetus must correspond a burst 
of nervous power, and for that burst we seem to need a 
certain mass of nervous substance—a large body of cor¬ 
puscles roused into activity. Think of the strain neces¬ 
sary to maintain a struggle of the will against a strong 
present appetite. In such a case as this, the corpuscles of 
the brain must act not solely as junctions for establishing 
complicated groupings, but as sources of energy; and they 
need to be multiplied in that view. Size of brain, or mul¬ 
titude of nerve-elements—fibres and corpuscles—does not 
follow Intellect alone, but varies with the need of motive 
muscular power; to which we must now add energy of 
emotional manifestations and of will or volitional impulses. 
Accordingly, a considerable share of the nervous elements 
has to be assigned to the class of growths now mentioned. 

There is a nice question raised, as to whether the three 
functions—Intellect, Emotion or Feeling, and Will, are 
separately located in the brain. The likelihood is that 
Intellectual combinations aud Feelings go together; with 


104 


THE INTELLECT. 


this difference, that the currents of Feelings or Emotions 
have a wider diffusion and more forcible impetus, and 
find their way to the motor centres at large, evoking what 
is called the Expression of feeling. The primitive shocks 
of Feeling, are at once intellectual and emotional, but may 
afterwards be developed more in the one direction than in 
the other; yet every intellectual exertion has an emo¬ 
tional side, every emotional outburst an intellectual side. 

The association of objects wdth Feelings is an immense 
power in the Mind; it governs very largely the pleasurable 
and painful susceptibilities of mature life. According to 
the doctrine of Evolution, this class of growths becomes 
hereditary, and accounts for our special emotions, as Fear, 
Love, and Anger., 

Let us put together these and other indications of the 
extent of the human acquisitions demanding separate and 
independent nervous embodiments. Take the case of learn¬ 
ing languages, where the numerical estimate is approxi¬ 
mately attainable. We can count the number of words in 
a language ; we can make allowance for the repetition of 
the same root-word in different compounds. The association 
of a word with a simple meaning, as sun, fire, hill, food, 
presents a limited, though still considerable, degree of 
complication. The association of one name with another 
in a foreign tongue, is a still simpler conjunction. 

I may cite as an illustration the Chinese language, with 
its forty thousand characters. The strongest memory is 


LANGUAGE.—VISUAL RECOLLECTIONS. 


105 


incapable of retaining these : indeed a very unusual stretch 
of memory is requisite to keep hold of the ten thousand 
needed for the ordinary literature. Again, consider the 
situation of a Philologist knowing six cultivated languages 
and ten uncultivated vocabularies (of several hundred 
vocables each). Such an acquirement w r ould use up little 
less than half the attention and plasticity of one’s life. If, 
then, this education w r ere represented by fifty thousand 
cerebral connexions, of variable complication, but many 
of them very simple, as word to word, we could assign 
a rough valuation to the magnitude of our possible 
acquisitions. 

The rival department to language, as regards variety 
and amount, is the department of visual recollections, or 
pictorial groupings and spectacle. Here, too, we reach a 
limit. A datum for calculation might be, how many faces 
could we remember, and associate with names and 
other accompaniments ? Not certainly more than two or 
three thousand. So with the remembrance of localities, 
as the streets of towns. A life would not suffice for laying 
up in the memory the streets of London. 

Such an object as the human face and figure might seem 
an enormous complication. Every feature has its form, 
size, and colouring; and the comprehension of such an 
aggregate would appear to demand an immense aggregate 
of sense impressions, and use up a very large area of ner¬ 
vous connexions. This complication, however, is delusive. 
The memory does not retain a coloured photograph, but 


106 


THE INTELLECT. 


only a few salient and deciding marks; perhaps not 
more than from six to ten indications of form, size, 
and colour. These are enough for identification, and we 
do not retain any more, except in cases of very peculiar 
intimacy. 

A Naturalist, with all the aids of classification, cannot 
retain in his memory the marks of more than perhaps two 
or three thousand species; for the rest he must be content 
to refer to his books. Yet he, too, must have devoted the 
larger half of the plastic energy of his brain to his special 
studies. 

The conclusion is that the cerebral growths, of a certain 
typical complication, cannot be adequately stated in 
hundreds; they amount to thousands, and even tens of 
thousands ; they scarcely count by hundreds of thousands. 

Let us make a rough estimate of the nervous elements 
—fibres and corpuscles—with a view to compare the 
number of these with the number of our acquisitions. 

The thin cake of grey substance, surrounding the hemi¬ 
spheres of the brain, and extended into many doublings by 
the furrowed or convoluted structure, is somewhat difficult 
to measure. It has been estimated at upwards of 300 
square inches, or as nearly equal to a square surface of 18 
inches in the side. Its thickness is variable, but, on an 
average, it may be stated at one-tenth of an inch. It is 
the largest accumulation of grey matter in the body. It 
is made up of several layers of grey substance divided by 


ACQUISITIONS and nervous elements compared. 107 

layers of white substance. The grey substance is a nearly 
compact mass of corpuscles, of variable size. The large 
caudate nerve-cells are mingled with very small corpuscles, 
less than the thousandth of an inch in diameter. Allow¬ 
ing for intervals, we may suppose that a linear row of 
five hundred cells occupies an inch ; thus giving a quarter 
of a million to the square inch, for 300 inches. If one 
half of the thickness of the layer is made up of fibres, 
the corpuscles or cells, taken by themselves, would be a 
mass one twentieth of an inch thick, say sixteen 
cells in the depth. Multiplying these numbers together, 
we should reach a total of twelve hundred millions of 
•cells in the grey covering of the hemispheres. As every 
cell is united with at least two fibres, often many more, 
we may multiply this number by four, for the number of 
connecting fibres attached to the mass; which gives four 
thousand eight hundred millions of fibres. Assume the 
respective numbers to he (corpuscles) one thousand, and 
(fibres) five thousand, millions, and make the comparison 
with our acquisitions as follows :— 

With a total of 50,000 Acquisitions, evenly spread over 
the whole of the hemispheres, there would be for each 
nervous grouping at the rate of 20,000 cells and 100,000 
fibres. 

With a total of 200,000 Acquisitions of the assumed 
types, which would certainly include the most retentive 
and most richly-endowed minds, there would be for each 
nervous grouping 5000 cells and 25,000 fibres. 


108 


THE INTELLECT. 


This leaves out of account a very considerable mass of 
nervous matter in the spinal cord, medulla oblongata, 
cerebellum, and the lesser grey centres of the brain; in 
all of which there are very large deposits of grey matter, 
with communicating white fibres to match. 

Such an estimate, confined to the hemispheres of the 
brain, is enough for its purpose, which is to show that 
numerous as are the embodiments to be provided for, the 
nervous elements are on a corresponding scale, and that 
there is no improbability in supposing an independent 
nervous track for each separate acquisition. 

It is not at all likely, however, that the entire brain 
can be partitioned equally among the various subjects 
to be remembered or acquired. Besides the fact that a 
great part of the brain substance exists for mere battery 
power—to propel muscles, and to keep up energetic voli¬ 
tions and manifestations of feeling—there seems often to 
be a duplication of the same embodiment in different parts. 
The two hemispheres apparently repeat one another; 
when one is injured, the other keeps up the trains of 
memory, although with weakened energies. It is even 
supposed that in the same hemisphere there may be 
duplicates ; since injuries in the forepart of the head 
have occurred without destroying any single class of acqui¬ 
sitions. Moreover, it is most unlikely that a perfect 
economy of the cells and fibres can be realized, however 
well distributed the acquisitions may be. Could we bring 


ISOLATION OF OUR TRAINS OF THOUGHT. 109 


all the elements into full play, there might possibly 
be room for many times our present average store of 
recollections. 

We may go one step further, and enquire how the various 
groupings may arise, and how they can be isolated so 
as to preserve the requisite distinctness in ou? trains of 
thought. Let me first call attention to the difficulties of 
the case. 

If each set of sensory fibres had one definite connexion 
with motory or outcariying fibres, we should have always 
the same movement answering to the stimulation of the 
same nerves, as in the reflex system; the fibre a could do 
nothing but effect the movement x. It is necessary to 
the variety and flexibility of our acquirements, that the 
fibre a should at one time take part in stimulating x, and 
at another time take part in stimulating y , the circum¬ 
stances being different. The stroke of the clock will 
stimulate us at one time to set out in one direction, and 
at another time in another direction, according to the ideas 
that it co-operates with. Then, again, the degree of the 
stimulation of the same fibres will determine, not merely 
a greater energy of the same response, as would happen in 
reflex stimulation, but a totally different response : a, 
weak , determines movement x; a, strong , determines y. 
The steersman of a ship making for port is guided by the 
intensity of the beacon light. 

These illustrations show the two chief conditions where- 


110 


THE INTELLECT. 


by the same nerve is instrumental in causing distinct 
movements, namely— 

1st. Its being differently grouped. 

2nd. Its being unequally stimulated. 

We shall begin with the case of difference of grouping. 
The fibre a stimulated along with b gives x; so a c 
gives y , and b c gives 0 . 

Let us try and imagine how the structure is adapted to 
this state of things. It requires us to assume, not merely 
fibres multiplying by ramification through the cell junc¬ 
tions, but also an extensive arrangement of cross connec¬ 
tions. We can typify it in this way. Suppose a enters a 
cell junction, and is replaced by several branches, a', a', 
&c.; b, in like manner, is multiplied into b', b', &c. Let 
one of the branches of a , or a', pass into some second cell, 
and a branch of b, or b', pass into the same, and let one of 
the emerging branches be X, we have then a means for 
connecting united a and b with X; and, in some other 
crossing, a branch of a may unite with a branch of c, from 
which crossing Y emerges, and so on. In every case 
of united stimulation producing a definite movement, we 
must suppose a set of cells where ramifications of the 
stimulated nerves unite themselves, and find an outlet of 
communication with that special movement. 

The diagram shows the arrangement. The fibre a 
branches into two a\ a!; the fibre b, into b', b'; c into 
c, c'. One of the branches of a unites with one of the 


CASE OF DIFFERENCE OF GROUPING. Ill 

branches of b, or a' b' in a cell X ; V c' unite in Y; a' c' in 
Z. These cells X, Y, Z, are supposed to be the commence¬ 
ment of motor fibres, each communicating with a separate 
muscular group, and rousing a distinctive movement. By 
this plan we comply with the primary condition of assign¬ 
ing a separate outcome to every different combination 
of sensory impressions. 

Fig. 2. 



We may compare this diagram with the following, given 
by Dr. Lionel Beale, to show the manner of junction of 
nerve fibres with caudate nerve cells. The crossing of 
fibres from one cell to collateral cells is exactly what is 
supposed in the foregoing representation. Dr. Beale is 
not advocating any theory of the physical basis of our in- 











112 


THE INTELLECT. 


tellectual acquisitions; his object is to represent the con¬ 
nexions of fibres and corpuscles as actually exhibited. The 
conformity of his diagram with the scheme of cross con¬ 
nections required by the foregoing hypothetical scheme, is 
very striking. But, indeed, without a most extensive 
system of these lateral communications, we should be 
wholly unable to imagine the embodiment of our dis¬ 
tinctive mental impressions. 


Fig. 3. 



We have taken the simplest case possible—binary 
groupings of three elements, a, b , c. The diagram 
shews that for these we need three primary fibres, 
six branching fibres, and six cells. Our acquisitions 
involve far more complex groupings. To give a distinctive 
character to the most ordinary impression on the eye, or 











UNEQUAL INTENSITIES OF STIMULATION. 


113 


the ear, there is commonly a union of four, five, six, seven, 
or more, separate impressions, as in the letters of a 
word, the characters of a piece of furniture, the marks of 
an individual person; and each of these elementary or 
constituent impressions—a letter of the alphabet, a round 
or square form,— is already a complex compound. Hence 
the number of fibres and cells brought into action, 
before the grouping can converge upon some one set of 
cells definitely connected with an out-going motor arrange¬ 
ment, or with some other internal grouping,—must be 
very great indeed ; and but for the vast number of fibres 
and cells, demonstrably present in the brain, the separate 
embodiment of every separate impression and idea would 
seem impracticable. 

Next as to unequal intensities of stimulation of the same 
nerves :—a, weak, is connected with X ; a, stronger, with 
Y; a, still stronger, with Z. When you taste a cup of 
tea, you give utterance to the word “ weak ” under one 
pitch of sensation ; at another pitch, the same nerves 
being affected, you give forth the word “good.” On a fine 
ear, the same fibres may discriminate many shades of in- 
tensit}', and may for every one be associated differently 
with vocal exertions. Now, a more energetic current 
necessarily takes a more extended sweep , and affects a 
number of cells and fibres that are left quiescent under a 
feebler current. The cells being viewed as crossings 
—where a current in one circuit induces a current in an 


I 


114 


THE INTELLECT. 


adjoining circuit—there is, at each crossing, a certain 
resistance to overcome, and the feebler current is sooner 
exhausted and stops short of the distance reached by 
stronger. It is like a larger wave on the sea-shore, whose 
superior bulk and impetus are made most conspicuous by 
outstripping all the rest as it rushes up the sands. We 
may figure the action thus :— 

A certain intensity makes an effective induction (in the 
electrical sense of the word “ induction ”), suppose once ; 
the currents so generated do not produce a second induc¬ 
tion of the same power. A weak current in a certain line 
of fibres produces, we shall say, a hundred secondary 
currents, which amount of diffusion gives to it its character 
in the consciousness, and its local habitation where it meets 
outgoing motor currents. But a stronger impetus will 
determine all these hundred secondary currents, and a 
hundred tertiary besides, which will make the character of 
its diffusion ; and the points where a number of the 
secondary concur with a number of the tertiary will be the 
points where a definite motor current may be associated 
with it. So that what begins as mere difference of inten¬ 
sity in one track ends in difference of grouping, or in 
characteristic points of meeting, whence a definite motor 
current may take its rise, and be distinctively united. 

The following diagram gives the supposed arrangement. 
The fibre a enters a cell, and three others emerge, marked 
a\ Each of these enters other cells, and there emerge a 
new set of fibres, marked a\ One of the first branchings, 


ILLUSTRATION OF VARYING INTENSITY. 115 

a\ is seen at the top of the figure proceeding with a 
second branching, a 3 , to the cell marked X. This con- 


X 



a 1 and a? give X 
a 2 , a 3 , and a 4 give Y. 

vergence would represent the lowest degree of intensity. 
A higher degree of intensity makes a larger sweep, 









116 


THE INTELLECT. 


affecting both second, third, and fourth branchings; a 
grouping made up of these is seen at the bottom of the 
figure, converging on Y, whence would proceed a charac¬ 
teristic motor impulse. The branchings to Y are a 2 , a 3 
and a\ 

For this arrangement there are at least eleven fibres— 
primary, secondary, &c.—and eight cells. A next higher 
degree would involve many more, in order that a definite 
grouping might converge at a point. There would be a 
rapidly increasing demand for numerous elements, in order 
to multiply the degrees of intensity—perhaps more so 
than in the union of different impressions. This is 
probably confirmed in our actual experience ; we embody 
more freely distinctive combinations of different im¬ 
pressions than various intensities of the same impression: 
we remember a parti-coloured object, as a piece of tartan, 
better than the differing intensities of a light, or a sound : 
and we have a much larger stock of recollections of 
distinct groupings than of different degrees of single 
effects. 

Having thus considered how to provide, for every new 
mental connexion demanded for our progressive acquire¬ 
ments, a special nervous track devoted to that connexion, 
the remaining point is to consider by what means the 
connexions are permanently fixed in the several tracks. 
This is to assign the physical bond underlying memory, 
recollection, or the retentive power of the mind. 


FIXING OF THE TRAINS OF THOUGHT. 


117 


We know what are the conditions of making an acquire¬ 
ment, or of fixing two or more things together in the 
memory. The separate impressions must *be made 
together, or flow in close succession; and they must be 
held together for a certain length of time, either on one 
occasion, or on repeated occasions. Now to each im¬ 
pression, each sensation or thought, there corresponds 
physically a group or series of nerve-currents ; when two 
impressions concur, or closely succeed one another, the 
nerve-currents find some bridge or place of continuity, 
better or worse, according to the abundance of nerve- 
matter available for the transition. In the cells or 
corpuscles where the currents meet and join, there is, in 
consequence of the meeting, a strengthened connexion or 
diminished obstruction —a preference track for that line 
over other lines where no continuity has been established. 

This is merely a hypothetical rendering of the facts: 
yet it is a very probable rendering. In the nature and 
number of the nerve elements, and their mode of con¬ 
nexion, there is nothing hypothetical; and there is no 
departure from fact or strong probability, in assigning 
special and distinct tracks for the currents connected with 
each separate sensation, idea, emotion, or other conscious 
state. As to the precise mode of the plastic growth that 
unites separate impressions into trains and aggregates in 
the memory,—we know that the corpuscles or crossings are 
the points that must be operated upon; that a flow of 
healthy blood must co-operate to the effect; and that the 


118 


CONNEXION OF MIND AND BODY. 


process takes time. It is evidently a species of growth : 
but the precise molecular change effected in the lines of 
strengthened communication, or diminished obstruction, 
we can describe only as increasing the conducting tendency 
in those lines, as compared with the collateral openings 
where no such operation has taken place.* 

* In thus endeavouring to sketch the embodiment of our intellectual 
functions in the cerebral system, I have been very much aided by the 
views and the diagrams of Dr. Lionel Beale. Almost every one of the 
views peculiar to him assist the foregoing speculation. 

1. As regards the connexion of the nerve-cells, Dr. Beale maintains 
that all true nerve-cells are continuous with nerve-fibres, and have at 
least two such connexions. The so-called apolar cells—having no 
visible communication with fibres—are without meaning on any 
hypothesis of nervous action hitherto suggested. Moreover, while it is 
admitted that there may be as few as two nerve connexions, a large 
proportion of cells must have more than two, otherwise nerve-fibres 
would have to rise in the brain as loose ends. 

2. With respect to the minuteness, and consequently the number, of 
the ultimate nerve fibres, Dr. Beale supposes that the so-called ultimate 
fibre (the dark-bordered fibre, varying from l-3000th to l-15000th of an 
inch) may be in reality a bundle, and that the true ultimate fibres are 
represented by the terminal ramifying fibres of 1-100,000th of an inch, or 
less. Now upon the supposition of a distinct nervous track, or series of 
connexions, for each distinct acquirement, the number of the fibres 
must correspond to the number of acquirements ; and the greater 
the number actually proved to exist, the more credible is the hypothesis 
of separate embodiment. 

3. The manner of connexion of the nerve-fibres with the cell, and 
with one another through the cell, is conjectured and figured by Dr. 
Beale in a plan that facilitates our conception of the physical growths 
underlying memory and acquisition. (I refer particularly to his paper 
in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol.xiii., p. 386, on the Paths of 
Nerve-currents in Nerve-cells.) He observed, in certain specimens of 
the caudate nerve-cells, a series of lines passing across the body of the 
cell, and continuing into its branches, or communicating with the 
nerves. He considers these lines as the tracks of nervous action through 
the cell, being probably somewhat different in substance from the rest 


beale’s views of nerve structure. Il9 


of the matter of the cell. He couples with this appearance the doctrine 
(maintained by him, although disputed by others) that the nerves 
terminate in loops, and consequently form an unbroken nervous 
circuit. He then suggests that the cell-crossing is the place where the 
inner bendings of a great many independent circuits come into close 
neighbourhood, and affect one another by a process of the nature of 
electrical induction. Any one of the circuits being active, or excited, 
would impart excitement to all that came near it in the same cell. (See 
fig. 3 of the paper referred to.) 

Now assuming such an arrangement, I can suppose that, at first, each 
one of the circuits would affect all the others indiscriminately; but 
that, in consequence of two of them being independently made active at 
the same moment (which is the fact in acquisition), a strengthened 
connexion or diminished obstruction would arise between these two, by 
a change wrought in the intervening cell-substance; and that, after¬ 
wards, the induction from one of these circuits would not be indis¬ 
criminate, but select; being comparatively strong towards one, and 
weaker towards the rest. 


CHAPTER VI. 

HOW ARE MIND AND BODY UNITED ? 

A VAST deal of speculation has been expended as to the 
manner of union of Mind and Body. The majority of 
persons are disposed to treat the question as insoluble, as 
unsuited to our faculties, as what is termed a “ mystery.” 

This word “ mystery ” is itself greatly misconceived. 
Such was the opinion of one of the ablest of biblical 
critics—Principal George Campbell—as to the employ¬ 
ment of the word in religious doctrine. In Campbell’s 
view “ ixvcrTripiov ” means simply what we call a secret—a 
thing for the time concealed, but afterwards to be made 
known. It is the correlative term to “Revelation,” which 
disclosed what had previously been hidden. 

In another acceptation, Mystery is correlated to Explana¬ 
tion ; it means something intelligible enough as a fact, but 
not accounted for, not reduced to any law, principle, or 
reason. The ebb and flow of the Tides, the motion of the 
Planets, Satellites, and Comets, were understood as facts 
at all times; but they were regarded as mysteries until 
Newton brought them under the Laws of Motion and of 
Gravity. Earthquakes and volcanoes are still mysterious ; 
their explanation is not yet fully made out. The imme- 


MEANING OF EXPLANATION. 


121 


diate derivation of muscular power and of animal heat 
is unknown, which renders these phenomena mysterious. 

The meaning of the correlative couple—Mystery, 
Explanation—has been rendered precise by the march of 
physical science since the age of Newton. Mystery is the 
isolation of a fact from all others. Explanation is the 
discerning of agreement among facts remotely placed: it 
is essentially the generalizing 'process, whereby many 
widely scattered appearances are shown to come under one 
commanding principle or law. The fall of a stone, the 
flow of rivers, the retention of the moon in her circuit, 
are all expressed by the single law of Gravity. This 
generalizing sweep is a real advance in our knowledge, an 
ascent in the scale of intelligence, a step towards the 
centralization of the empire of science ; and it is the only 
real meaning of Explanation. A difficulty is solved, a 
mystery is unriddled, according as the mysterious fact can 
be shown to resemble other facts. M} r stery is solitariness, 
exception, or it may be apparent contradiction ; the reso¬ 
lution of the mystery is found in assimilation, identity, 
fraternity. When all natural operations are assimilated, 
as far as assimilation can go, as far as likeness holds, there 
is an end to explanation, and to the necessity for it; there 
is an end to what the mind can intelligently desire; 
perfect vision is consummated. 

But, say many persons, after resolving the fall of a 
stone and the sun’s attraction into one force called 


122 


HOW ARE MIND AND BODY UNITED ? 


gravity, there still remains the mystery—what is gravity ? 
Even Newton sought to explain gravity itself. Well, if 
you must go farther, find some other force to assimilate 
with gravity; you will then make a new generalizing 
stride, and achieve a farther step of explanation. If, how¬ 
ever, there is no other force to be assimilated, gravity is 
the final term of explanation, the full revelation of the 
mystery. There is nothing farther to be done ; nothing 
farther to be desired. Nor have we here any reason to be 
dissatisfied with this position, to complain of baulked 
satisfaction, or of being on a lower platform than we 
might possibly occupy. Our intelligence is fully honoured, 
fully implemented, by the possession of a principle as wide 
in its sweep as the phenomenon itself. 

Apply all this to the union of Mind and Body. These 
two phenomena have very little in common; they parti¬ 
cipate only in the most general attributes, namely, 
Quantity, Co-existence, and Succession, and even as 
regards these their participation is limited. 

As to Quantity, Degree, or distinction of More and 
Less, there is no exemption on the part of either. The 
properties of every material body are distinguished as 
more or less ; magnitude, weight, colour, hardness, &c., 
have assignable degrees or amounts specific to each 
substance. So also are the mental properties distinguished 
as more or less; our pleasures, our pains, our thoughts, 
may be numbered and measured, although the grades of 


CONTRAST OF MATTER AND MIND. 


123 


intensity of the feelings cannot be assigned with the same 
minute precision that belongs to the leading material pro¬ 
perties, such as size, weight, or tenacity. Again, material 
properties co-exist; a plurality may concur in the same 
object; a diamond has size, form, transparency, and other 
qualities, all co-inhering in the same unity. So mental 
attributes co-inhere, are attached to a common subject; 
the same mind feels, wills, and thinks. Lastly, Material 
phenomena are in a state of change or mutation; they 
show successive phases ; and in their succession we recog¬ 
nise the peculiar and remarkable bond termed Causation, 
or Cause and Effect. A spark falls into water, it is 
extinguished ; it falls on gunpowder, there is an explosion. 
The same fluctuation, mutation, succession, and causation, 
may be traced in the workings of mind ; a pain suddenly 
ceasing, is followed by a re-action of pleasure. 

The one feature usually signalized as present in all 
material phenomena, and absent from all states of the 
conscious mind, is that mode of Co-existence called Order 
in Place, Extension* A building or a tree is named as 
an extended thing; a pleasure, a pain, a recollection, is 
not felt to be extended; there is an incompatibility 
between a feeling and a perception of extended magni¬ 
tude. While we are mentally occupied or engrossed with 
a genial warmth, we are not able to entertain the percep¬ 
tion of a room, or a fire, as occupying space. 

Bodily facts and mental facts are in themselves equally 


124 


HOW ABE MIND AND BODY UNITED? 


conceivable, equally intelligible. When we see a table we 
perceive it in the way suited to our faculties ; there is no 
reservation or mystery attached to it as a table. When 
we feel a warm surface, we have a sufficient notion of 
what warmth is. There is a marked difference of nature 
between these two feelings ; they differ much more than 
a table differs from a house, or the taste of sugar from 
the sound of an iEolian harp. Yet difference does not 
interfere with knowledge, but on the contrary adds to it; 
every new difference is the revelation of a new quality. 

I repeat, what a piece of matter is, what an operation of 
mind is, we know equally well; we see that they both 
agree and differ from other kinds of matter, and from 
other operations of mind. There is a much closer kindred 
between material facts among themselves, and between 
mental facts among themselves, than between material 
facts generally and mental facts generally. Hence, we 
resolve all the facts of nature ultimately into two kinds— 
matter and mind ; and we do not resolve these into 
anything higher. We come upon a wider contrast at this 
point than we had in any prior stage of our generalizing 
movement. The Plants and the Animals differ widely in 
their details ; both differ still more widely from Inanimate 
Mattel. Yet they agree in all the principal features of 
material bodies ; and are in total opposition to mind, 
which has neither the distinctive features of either, nor 
the common attributes of both. The inanimate and the 
animate are not so different as body and mind. 


PROPERTIES OF MATTER. 


125 


Extension is but the first of a long series of properties 
all present in matter, all absent in mind. Inertia 
cannot belong to a pleasure, a pain, an idea, as experienced 
in the consciousness ; it can belong only to the physical 
accompaniments of mind—the overt acts of volition, and 
the manifestations of feeling. Inertia is accompanied 
with Gravity, a peculiarly material property. So Colour 
is a truly material property, it cannot attach to a feel¬ 
ing, properly so called, a pleasure or a pain. These 
three properties are the basis of matter; to them are 
superadded. Form, Motion, Position, and a host of 
other properties expressed in terms of these—Attractions 
and Repulsions, Hardness, Elasticity, Cohesion, Crystal¬ 
lization, Heat, Light, Electricity, Chemical properties, 
Organized properties (in special kinds of matter). 

When we have laid out in full array the properties 
peculiar to matter, and the properties peculiar to mind, 
we present two distinct departments of study, having 
each its difficulties to be overcome. Matter in many of 
its properties is simple, intelligible, devoid of all mystery, 
the very type of plainness; such are Extension, Inertia, 
Gravity. It has other properties less known, but yet not 
altogether unintelligible, as Heat, Light, Electricity, 
Chemical attraction. A third class are still less under¬ 
stood, and verge on the mysterious, as the Vital properties. 
We do not fully understand how the nutritive processes 
yield muscular motion; we cannot assimilate the fact with 
any other known facts, or bring it under any known law. 


126 


HOW ARE MIND AND BODY UNITED ? 


Mind, in some of its phenomena, is plain enough. We 
distinguish Pleasures and Pains, we know many of the 
laws of their rise, subsidence, and mutual action. We 
know as a fact that our thoughts follow in trains, and we 
can resolve many of the successions into general laws of 
succession; which is, up to a certain point, to explain the 
phenomena. We are less acquainted with the laws govern¬ 
ing the successions in dreaming; these successions are 
by comparison mysterious to us. 

There are thus two knowledges, each advancing on its 
own way, and gradually extending the region of the plain 
and intelligible at the expense of the obscure, the isolated, 
and the unintelligible. So far, there is nothing that any 
one can complain of, excepting the slowness of our progress. 
But now we have to take account of a new fact, namely, 
that these two classes of properties are conjoined in the 
unity of a sentient being—man or animal. The same 
being that exhibits the mental powers, is a lump of 
matter, characterized by a great number of the most 
subtle endowments of matter. A sentient animal has 
two endowments, two sides or aspects of its being—the 
one all matter, the other all mind. Notwithstanding the 
cardinal opposition of the two sets of powers, they are 
inseparably joined in the same being; they co-inhere in 
the one individual, man or animal. This may seem 
curious or wonderful, but there is nothing in it to take 
umbrage at. If mind exists, it must exist somewhere and 
somehow ; for anything we know, it might have existed 


MIND ASSOCIATED WITH MATTER. 


127 


apart, in a way that we cannot figure to ourselves for 
want of some example within our reach. In actual fact, 
it exists in company with a peculiar mass of matter, 
containing in a very superior degree the properties known 
as living or organized. Mind is not associated with 
mineral or inanimate matter. Does this conjunction inter¬ 
fere with our study of the two separate departments— 
mind and body—each according to its kind ? Apparently 
not. It cannot interfere with our observation of all those 
material properties in minerals and vegetables that exist 
without an alliance with mental powers. It need not inter¬ 
fere with the study even of the highly organized functions 
of animals, unless these are somehow or other controlled 
by mental operations, which can be known only by actual 
examination. 

We might thus, to all appearance, proceed in our sepa¬ 
rate tracts of material and of mental investigation, in spite 
of the incorporation of the mental with the material in 
certain living subjects. But now, are we to take any 
notice of the fact of the union itself? Are we to enun¬ 
ciate as a property of matter, that a certain highly compli¬ 
cated material mass can be associated with mind; and as 
a property of mind, that it is found in alliance with a 
material body ? Surely, if such be the fact, we are at 
liberty to declare it. May we then call it a mystery ? In 
a certain sense we may. It is a fact isolated and uniqhe, 
if we look at matter generally; but it is yet of wide 


128 


HOW ARE MIND AND BODY UNITED? 


prevalence, if we combine the number of individuals of 
the human race with the still greater numbers of the lower 
animals. The repetition of it over so wide a field redeems 
the mystery by familiarity; although it does not take 
away the bold contrast between the animal nature on the 
one hand, and plants and minerals on the other. 

The mystery will be still farther reduced if we can 
resolve the connexion as stated in gross, to separate and 
specific laws of connexion. This would be a step of 
genuine enlightenment in any region of nature. We 
accept the union as a fact, just as we accept any other 
union,—Heat with Light, Magnetism with the sesquioxide 
of iron, Gravity with Inert Matter. We then endeavour 
to express it in its simplest terms, or under the most com¬ 
prehensive laws. Let us resolve into the highest possible 
generalities, the connexion of pleasures and pains with all 
the physical stimulants of the senses, with all the sugges¬ 
tions of thought, with all the external manifestations in 
feature, gesture, movement, and secretion ; and when this 
is done we shall have resolved one part of the mystery 
by the only mode of resolution that the case admits of. 
Let us go farther if we can : let us generalize the con¬ 
nexions of thought or intellect with nervous and other 
processes; find out what physical basis specifically belongs 
to memory, to reason, to imagination, and what are the 
most general statements of the relationship : we shall then 
fully, sufficiently, finally explain the alliance of mind and 
body in the sphere of intellect. There is no other explan a- 


MODES OF EXPRESSING THE UNION. 


129 


tion needful, no other competent, no other that would 
he explanation. Instead of our being unfortunate, as is 
sometimes said, in not being able to know the essence of 
either mind or matter, in not rendering an account of their 
union, our misfortune would be to have to know anything 
different from what we do or may know. There is surely 
nothing to complain of in the circumstance that the ele¬ 
ments of our experience are, in the last resort, not one 
but two. If there, were fifty ultimate experiences, none of 
them having a single property in common with any other; 
and if we had only our present limited powers of under¬ 
standing, we might be entitled to complain of the" world’s 
mysteriousness, in the one proper acceptation of mystery, 
namely, as overpowering our means of intellectual compre¬ 
hension, as weighing us down with a load of unassimilable 
facts. But our actual difficulty is far short of this; the 
institution of two distinct entities is uot in itself a crushing 
dispensation. 

It remains to consider the expression most suited to 
this union of the two distinct and mutually irresolvable 
natures. By inapplicable phraseology many a question 
has been darkened and mystified to the point of despair. 
In the History of Philosophy we find numerous instances 
of contradictions brought about by inappropriate language; 
most of all in this very case of mind and body, as will appear 
in the closing chapter, on the History of the question. 

The doctrine of two substances—a material united 

K 


130 


HOW ARE MIND AND BODY UNITED? 


with an immaterial in a certain vaguely defined relation, 
ship—which has prevailed from the time of Thomas 
Aquinas to the present day, is now in course of being 
modified, at the instance of modern physiology. The 
dependence of purely intellectual operations, as memory, 
upon the material processes, has been reluctantly admitted 
by the partisans of an immaterial principle ; an admission 
incompatible with the isolation of the intellect in Aristotle 
and in Aquinas. This more thorough-going connexion of 
the mental and the physical has led to a new form of 
expressing the relationship, which is nearer the truth, 
without being, in my judgment, quite accurate. It is now 
often said that the mind and the body act upon each other ; 
that neither is allowed, so to speak, to pursue its course 
alone ; there is a constant interference, a mutual influence 
between the two. This view is liable to the following 
objections :— 

In the first place, it assumes that we are entitled to 
speak of mind apart from body, and to affirm its powers 
and properties in that separate capacity. But of mind 
apart from body we have no direct experience, and abso¬ 
lutely no knowledge. The wind may act upon the sea, and 
the waves may react upon the wind ; yet the agents are 
known in separation, they are seen to exist apart before 
the shock of collision; but we are not allowed to perceive 
a mind acting apart from its material companion. 

In the second place, we have every reason for believing 
that there is, in company with all our mental processes, an 


MUTUAL ACTION OF MIND AND BODY. 


131 


unbroken material succession. From the ingress of a 
sensation, to the outgoing responses in action, the mental 
succession is not for an instant dissevered from a physical 
succession. A new prospect bursts upon the view ; there 
is a mental result of sensation, emotion, thought—termi¬ 
nating in outward displays of speech or gesture. Parallel 
to this mental series is the physical series of facts, the 
successive agitation of the physical organs, called the eye, 
the retina, the optic nerve, optic centres, cerebral hemi¬ 
spheres, outgoing nerves, muscles, &c. While we go the 
round of the mental circle of sensation, emotion, and 
thought, there is an unbroken physical circle of effects. 
It would be incompatible with everything we know of the 
cerebral action, to suppose that the physical chain ends 
abruptly in a physical void, occupied by an immaterial 
substance; which immaterial substance, after working 
alone, imparts its results to the other edge of the physical 
break, and determines the active response—two shores 
of the material with an intervening ocean of the im¬ 
material. There is, in fact, no rupture of nervous con¬ 
tinuity. The only tenable supposition is, that mental and 
physical proceed together, as undivided twins. When, 
therefore, we speak of a mental cause, a mental agency, we 
have always a two-sided cause ; the effect produced is not 
the effect of mind alone, but of mind in company with 
body. That mind should have operated on the body, is as 
much as to say, that a two-sided phenomenon, one side 
being bodily, can influence the body; it is, after all, body 

K 2 


132 


HOW ARE MIND AND BODY UNITED? 


acting upon body. When a shock of fear paralyses diges¬ 
tion, it is not the emotion of fear, in the abstract, or as a 
pure mental existence, that does the harm; it is the 
emotion in company with a peculiarly excited condition of 
the brain and nervous system ; and it is this condition of 
the brain that deranges the stomach. When physical 
nourishment, or a physical stimulant, acting through the 
blood, quiets the mental irritation, and restores a cheerful 
tone, it is not a bodily fact causing a mental fact by a 
direct line of causation : the nourishment and the stimulus 
determine the circulation of blood to the brain, give a new 
direction to the nerve currents; and the mental condition 
corresponding to this particular mode of cerebral action 
henceforth manifests itself. The line of mental sequence 
is thus, not mind causing body, and body causing mind, 
but mind-body giving birth to mind-body; a much more 
intelligible position. For this double, or conjoint causa¬ 
tion, we can produce evidence ; for the single-handed 
causation we have no evidence. 

The same line of criticism applies to another phrase 
in common use, namely, “the mind uses the body as its 
instrument ,” or medium of operating on the external 
world. This also assumes for mind a separate existence, 
a power of living apart, an option of working with or 
without a body. Actuated by the desire of making itself 
known, and of playing a part in the sphere of matter, 
the mind uses its bodily ally to gratify this desire; but 


THE BODY THE INSTRUMENT OF MIND. 


133 


if it chose to be self-contained, to live satisfied with its 
own contemplations, like the gods as conceived by Aristotle, 
it need not enter into co-operation with any physical 
process, with brain, senses, or muscular organs. I will 
not re-iterate the groundlessness of this supposition. The 
physical alliance is the very law of our mental being; it 
is not contrived purely for the purpose of making our 
mental states known: without it we should not have 
mental states at all. The imparting our feelings to 
others, and the setting outward things in motion, are 
consequences of the alliance, but they are not its primary 
motive. The resolve on our part to affect other minds is 
already a physical fact, in company with a mental fact ; 
it is not a whit more physical when carried into overt 
display. 

If all mental facts are at the same time physical facts, 
some will ask what is the meaning of a proper mental 
fact ? Is there any difference at all between mental 
agents and physical agents ? There is a very broad 
difference, which may be easily illustrated. When any 
one is pleased, stimulated, cheered, by food, wine, or 
bracing air—we call the influence physical; it operates on 
the viscera, and through these upon the nerves, by a 
chain of sequence purely physical. When one is cheered 
by good news, by a pleasing spectacle, or by a stroke of 
success, the influence is mental; sensation, thought, and 
consciousness are part of the chain; although these 


134 


HOW ARE MIND AND BODY UNITED ? 


cannot be sustained without their physical basis. The 
proper physical fact is a single, one-sided, objective fact; 
the mental fact is a two-sided fact,—one of its sides being 
a train of feelings, thoughts, or other subjective elements. 
We do not fully represent the mental fact, unless we take 
account of both the sides. The so-called mental influences, 
—cheerful news, a fine poem, and the rest,—cannot 
operate, except on a frame physically prepared to respond 
to the stimulation. 

While admitting that there is something unique, if not 
remarkable, in the close incorporation of the two extreme 
and contrasted facts, termed Mind and Matter, we must 
grant that the total difference of nature has rendered the 
union very puzzling to express in language. The history 
of the question repeatedly exemplifies this difficulty. 

What I have in view is this. When I speak of mind as 
allied with body—with a brain and its nerve-currents—I 
can scarcely avoid localizing the mind, giving it a local 
habitation. I am thereupon asked to explain what always 
puzzled the schoolmen, namely, whether the mind is all in 
every part, or only all in the whole; whether in tapping 
any point I may come at consciousness, or whether the 
whole mechanism is wanted for the smallest portion of con¬ 
sciousness. One might perhaps turn the question by the 
analogy of the telegraph wire, or the electric circuit, and 
say that a complete circle of action is necessary to any 
mental manifestation ; which is probably true. But this 


MIND HAS NO LOCALITY. 


135 


does not meet the case. The fact is, that, all the time that 
we are speaking of nerves and wires, we are not speaking 
of mind, properly so called, at all; we are putting forward 
physical facts that go along with it, but these physical 
facts are not the mental fact, and they even preclude us 
from thinking of the mental fact. We are in this fix: 
mental states and bodily states are utterly contrasted; they 
cannot be compared, they have nothing in common except 
the most general of all attributes—degree, and order in 
time ; when engaged with one we must be oblivious of all 
that distinguishes the other. When I am studying a brain 
and nerve communications, I am engrossed with properties 
exclusively belonging to the object or material world; I 
am unable at that moment (except by very rapid transi¬ 
tions or alternations) to conceive a truly mental fact, my 
truly mental consciousness. Our mental experience, our 
feelings and thoughts, have no extension, no place, no form 
or outline, no mechanical division of parts ; and we are 
incapable of attending to anything mental until we shut 
off the view of all that. Walking in the country in spring, 
our mind is occupied with the foliage, the bloom, and the 
grassy meads—all purely objective things : we are suddenly 
and strongly arrested by the odour of the May-blossom ; 
we give way for a moment to the sensation of sweetness ; 
for that moment the objective regards cease ; v r e think of 
nothing extended; we are in a state where extension has 
no footing; there is, to us, place no longer. Such states 
are of short duration, mere fits, glimpses; they are con- 


136 


HOW ARE MIND AND BODY UNITED? 


stantly shifted and alternated with object states, but while 
they last and have their full power we are in a different 
world; the material world is blotted out, eclipsed, for the 
instant unthinkable. These subject-moments are studied 
to advantage in bursts of intense pleasure, or intense pain, 
in fits of engrossed reflection, especially reflection upon 
mental facts; but they are seldom sustained in purity 
beyond a very short interval; we are constantly returning 
to the object side of things—to the world whose basis is 
extension and place. 

This, then, as it appears to me, is the only real difficulty 
of the physical and mental relationship. There is an 
alliance with matter , with the object, or extended world ; 
but the thing allied, the mind proper, has itself no exten¬ 
sion, and cannot be joined in local union. Now, we have 
a difficulty in providing any form of language, any familiar 
analogy, suited to this unique conjunction; in comparison 
with all ordinary unions, it is a paradox or a contradiction. 
We understand union in the sense of local connexion; here 
is a union where local connexion is irrelevant, unsuitable, 
contradictory; for we cannot think of mind without 
putting ourselves out of the world of place. When, as in 
pure feeling—pleasure or pain—we change from the object 
attitude to the subject attitude, we have undergone a 
change not to be expressed by place ; the fact is not pro¬ 
perly described by the transition from the external to the 
internal, for that is still a change in the region of the 


MATTER AND MIND DIFFERENT STATES. 


137 


extended. The only adequate expression is a change 
of state : a change from the state of the extended 
cognition to a state of unextended cognition. By various 
theologians, heaven has been spoken of as not a place, but 
a state ; and this is the only phrase that I can find suitable 
to describe the vast, though familiar and easy, transition 
from the material or extended, to the immaterial or unex¬ 
tended side of our being. 

When, therefore, we talk of incorporating mind with 
brain, we must be held as speaking under an important 
reserve or qualification. Asserting the union in the 
strongest manner, we must yet deprive it of the almost 
invincible association of union in place. An extended 
organism is the condition of our passing into a state where 
there is no extension. A human being is an extended and 
material mass, attached to which is the power of becoming- 
alive to feeling and thought, the extreme remove from all 
that is material; a condition of trance wherein, while it 
lasts, the material drops out of view—so much so, that we 
have not the power to represent the two extremes as lying- 
side by side, as container and contained, or in any other 
mode of local conjunction. The condition of our existing 
thoroughly in the one, is the momentary eclipse or extinc¬ 
tion of the other. 

The only mode of union that is not contradictory is the 
union of close succession in time ; or of position in a con¬ 
tinued thread of conscious life. We are entitled to say 


138 


HOW ARE MIND AND BODY UNITED ? 


that the same being is, by alternate fits, object and sub¬ 
ject, under extended and under unextended consciousness; 
and that without the extended consciousness the unex¬ 
tended would not arise. Without certain peculiar modes 
of the extended—what we call a cerebral organization, 
and so on—we could not have those times of trance, oui 
pleasures, our pains, and our ideas, w r hich at present we 
undergo fitfully and alternately with our extended 
consciousness. 



CHAPTER VII. 

HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

Let me first classify the different views that may he 
held as to the ultimate component elements of a human 
being. 


I. Two Substances. 

1. Both Material. 

a. The prevailing conception among the lower races. 

b. Most of the ancient Greek philosophers. 

c. The early Christian Fathers. 

2. An Immaterial and a Material. 

a. Commencement in Plato and in Aristotle. 

b. The later Fathers from the age of Augustine. 

c. The Schoolmen. 

d. Descartes. 

e. The prevalent opinion. 

II. One Substance. 

1. Mind and Matter the same. 

a. The cruder forms and expressions of Materialism. 

b. The Pantheistic Idealism of Fichte. 


140 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

2. Contrast of Mind and Matter saved. 

Guarded or qualified Materialism—held by many Phy¬ 
siologists and Metaphysicians : the growing opinion. 

As the present historical sketch is principally occupied 
with (1) the development, and (2) the decay of Im- 
materialism, let me further prepare the way by a sum¬ 
mary view of the arguments of its supporters, which are 
also the points of attack of its assailants. 

1. The Soul must partake of the nature or essence o r 
the Deity. 

2. The Soul has no determinate place in the body. 

3. Reason or Thought—the power of cognizing the 
Universal—is incompatible with matter (Aquinas). 

4. The dignity of the Soul requires an essence superior 
to matter. 

5. Matter is divisible; Mind indivisible. 

6. Matter is changeable and corruptible ; Mind is a pure 
substance. 

7. Mind is active, or possesses Force ; Matter is passive, 
inert, the thing acted on. 

8. The Soul is the primary source or principle of Life. 

9. The Mind has a Personal Identity ; the particles of 
the Body are continually changing. 

The interesting and elaborate inquiries, recently pro¬ 
secuted with regard to the mental condition and modes of 
thinking of the Lower Races, have contributed the first 
chapter of the history of the soul. I allude more 


THEORIES OF THE LOWER RACES. 


141 


particularly to the writings of Sir John Lubbock, Mr. 
McLennan, and Mr. Tylor, who have thrown a flood of 
light on the primitive history of mankind ; bringing the 
development of religious ideas up to the point where 
Greek philosophy took its start. 

Mr. Tylor has appropriated the word “Animism” to 
express the recognition, throughout all the races of 
mankind, of the Soul as a distinct entity. There are two 
classes of souls : those of individual creatures, like our¬ 
selves, capable of continued existence after death; and 
those of purely spiritual beings of all grades up to the 
most powerful deities. 

As regards our present subject, two distinct problems 
(says Mr. Tylor) engaged the thoughts of men at a low 
level of culture. First, What makes the difference between 
a living body and a dead one—between one awake and 
one either asleep or in some lifeless condition ? Secondly, 
What are those human shapes appearing in dreams and 
visions ? In early savage philosophy, the two sets of 
phenomena were made to account for and implement 
each other, by the conception of an apparition-soul or 
a ghost-soul. The absence of this constitutes the life¬ 
less body; its presence as a visitor made the dream, 
apparition, or ghost. 

The matter, material, or substance of the ghost-soul is 
a sort of vapour, film, or shadow, impalpable to the touch, 
and invisible, except on the particular occasions when it 
manifests itself in dream or vision; exercising physical 


142 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 


power; bearing a likeness to the person that it belongs to, 
and showing itself clad in habiliments and accoutrements; 
capable not only of leaving the body, but of flashing 
swiftly from place to place, with a perfect masteiy of 
distance; able to take possession of the bodies of other 
men, or of animals, and to act through these. As a 
matter of course, the soul is the principle of life and of all 
mental activity in the individual that it primarily belongs 
to. (Tylor, “ Primitive Culture,” I. 387).* 

The words for expressing the soul show the prevailing 
conception of its nature or substance. Foremost among 
these is the “ shadow ” or “ shade,” so widely diffused 

* The possession of a Soul was not limited to human beings. That 
Animals also had souls was an equally prevalent belief, and was the 
foundation of numerous rites and customs. No radical distinction 
could be drawn between men and animals, as to the possession of the 
attributes grouped together under the Soul. 

The analogy between men and Plants is much feebler; but it still 
contains the marked features of life and death, health and sickness. 
This was enough for endowing Plants too with souls. The doctrine 
of transmigration allows plants to enter into the line of successive 
tenancy of a spirit. Moreover, the existence of tree-worship carries with 
it by inference the belief in tree-souls. 

The attributing of spirits, or souls, to Inanimate objects would seem 
to proceed upon a very attenuated analogy. In the case of great 
natural agents, as the winds, the rivers, the oceans, fire, the sun 
the circumstance of exercising power is itself a strong point of 
resemblance, although accompanied with great disparity ; the per¬ 
sonifying of nature has here its commencement. The so-called object- 
souls, souls of useful articles—tools, implements, armour, houses, 
canoes—have a place among the spirits of the inferior races : a purely 
utilitarian conception of the soul. The often-cited worship of “ stocks 
and stones” is no doubt the lowest degradation of the human faculty of 
reverence ; but the reason of its existence has been assigned with great 
probability. (Sir John Lubbock, “ Origin of Civilization,” chap v.) 


EARLY MODES OF EXPRESSING THE SOUL 


143 


among civilized languages. The “ shadow” happily com¬ 
bined two of the requisites of the soul, the unsubstantial 
quality , and the form of the individual man ; although, if 
critically considered, it would have various drawbacks. 
Next comes the “heart,” from the connexion of the pulses 
with full vitality: allied to which is the widely-spread 
identity of soul and “blood.” Thirdly, great use has 
been made of the “ breath ” in designating the soul; the 
connexion of breathing with life being obvious; psyche , 
pneuma, animus , spiritus , are of this origin ; and there 
are parallels in the Semitic and other languages. The 
association of life with the “pupil of the eye,” has also 
been traced in various traditions, European and others; 
from the marked difference between the eye in full health 
and animation, and its appearance in sickness and in 
death. (Tylor, pp. 388—391.)* 

Thus, we may very fairly say that the sole theory 
of mind and body existing in the lower stages of culture, 
is a double materialism. This was within their grasp. 
An Immaterial soul was entirely beyond their intellectual 
comprehension. Until the Greek philosophy taught the 
world how to use and abuse abstract notions, Imma- 
terialism was not an attainable phase of thought. 

In turning next, therefore, to the speculations of Ancient 

* Mr. Tylor traces an interesting result of the plurality of figurative 
designations for the soul, in the development of a plurality of functions, 
and even a plurality of souls; so early did the ambiguities and con¬ 
fusions of language govern men’s conceptions of things. 


144 HISTORY OF THE THEORTES OF THE SOUL. 

Greece, we are greatly helped by the well wrought-out 
delineation of the theories that first constituted the 
education of the Grecian thinkers. The bold originality 
and intellectual acumen of the Greeks were displayed in 
this, as in so many other fields; but they could not 
entirely free themselves of their inherited bias. 

Generally speaking, the Greek philosophers were double 
materialists. They duly distinguished between the sub¬ 
stance of the soul and the substance of the body; but 
the substance of the soul was still accounted matter—namely, 
the two higher elements, Air and Fire ; to which Aristotle, 
subtilizing still farther, added an iEther, or fifth essence 
(quintessence). These higher elements made up the 
celestial bodies, as well as the gods themselves ; they were 
distinguished from the lower couple, Earth and Water, not 
merely by their subtle and impalpable consistency, but 
by the regularity and perfection of their movements; 
the gross matter below the sphere of the moon was 
subject to great irregularity, and was on that account an 
inferior essence. It was not to be expected that the 
substance of the human soul would transcend the sub¬ 
stance of the gods; the assimilation of mind to Deity is 
common at all stages of culture. 

We perceive from this summary view, which will pre¬ 
sently be unfolded into details, that the ancient Greeks 
made a step in advance of the earlier races, by availing 
themselves of their new physical speculations, whereby 
they classified the great elements,—Earth, Water, &c.—and 


THE PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS. 


145 


distinguished the several characteristics of these. From 
the “shadow” of the primitive thinker to the Air and 
Fire of the Grecian sage, there was a great stride in 
refinement of conception, although there was no essential 
departure from a materialistic theory. 

The ancients differed from the moderns in not 
admitting the separate existence of the soul (although 
Aquinas understood Plato’s pre-existence as separation). 
Those of them that held the doctrine of personal 
immortality coupled it with transmigration ; the soul in 
quitting one body found another ready for its reception. 
After-existence was thus coupled with pre-existence. It 
was repugnant to these philosophers to suppose an absolute 
beginning, or creation, either for matter or for mind. 

Let us, however, descend to particulars. 

The pre-Socratic philosophers made very little way with 
the nature of the Soul. Several of them touched the 
subject, and brought it under their peculiar scheme of 
nature in general. Heracleitus adopted the principle 
of Mutation as his basis of explanation of all things ; and 
the Soul partook of the common attribute in a higher 
decree. Its subtlety and fluency enabled it to know all 
other things. Empedocles is the originator of the doctrine 
of the Four Elements —fire, air, water, earth; with Love ana 
Hatred as principles of motion, the one uniting and the 
other disjoining the elements. The Soul is compounded 
in the same way; and on the principle of like being known 


146 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

by like, each of its elements knows the like element in the 
world. Anaxagoras set up Nous or Mind as the great 
prime mover of the world. While all material bodies 
were mixtures of all the simple elements, Nous was the 
pure, unmixed element; the thinnest and subtlest of all 
matter, more so than either air or fire, but of great energy: 
unacted on by matter, it was itself not only cognitive, but 
active, and the source of all change. Diogenes, of 
Apollonia, adopted Air as the constituent of the soul, at 
once mobile, all penetrating and intelligent. Demokritus, 
the Atomist , gave to the element fire, and to the soul, the 
atoms of spherical figure ; it was their nature never to be at 
rest: they were the sources of all motion. 

Pythagoras had called the soul a Number and a 
Harmony, like everything else; but some of the 
Pythagoreans looked upon it as an aggregate of particles 
of extreme subtlety, pervading the air, and in constant 
agitation. 

In these views we see two distinct tendencies:— 
to regard the soul as subtle, ethereal , and refined, in 
contrast with the grossness of solid matter; and to view 
it as the active principle of nature, as self-moved, and the 
cause of motion in corporeal things. 

Plato’s theory of the Soul was one of the influences 
determining the modern settlement of the question. It 
starts from his doctrine of eternal, self-existent Ideas or 
Forms, which were anterior to what we call the universe, 


PLATO. 


147 


or the Kosmos. To the formation of the Kosmos, there 
concurred two factors,—the Ideas and a co-eternal Chaos, 
or indeterminate matter, in discordant and irregular 
motion. A Divine Architect, or Demiurgus, on con¬ 
templating the Ideas, made the world in conformity 
therewith, so far as the things of sense could be made to 
correspond with the eternal types. The Architect had 
to contend with a pre-existing power, called Necessity, 
represented by the irregular motions of the primitive 
chaos ; only up to a certain point could he control this 
Necessity, and make it give place to regularity. With 
such a difficulty to struggle against, the Demiurgus proceeds 
to construct or fabricate the Kosmos. In its totality this 
is a vast and comprehensive animated being; the model 
for it is the Idea of Animal,—the Self-Animal (avroCatov). 
As created, the Kosmos is a scheme of rotatory spheres, 
and has both a Soul and a Body. The Soul, rooted at 
the centre, and pervading the whole, is self-moving, and 
the cause of movement in the Kosmical Body. The 
Kosmos, in its peripheral or celestial regions, contains 
the gods; in its central or lower regions of air, water, and 
earth, are placed men, quadrupeds, birds, and fishes. 
From the Divine part of the Kosmos there was a gradual 
degeneracy in the creation of men and animals'. The 
human cranium was a little Kosmos, containing a rational 
and immortal soul, of adulterated materials; while in 
the body there are two inferior and mortal souls : the 
higher of the two situated in the chest, and manifesting 


148 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

Energy, courage, anger, &c.; the lower placed in the 
abdomen, and displaying Appetite. The two lower souls 
are the disturbers of the higher rational soul, confusing 
its rotations, and perverting their harmonious properties. 
Yet notwithstanding its superior dignity, the soul is 
never detached from the body'; it has the corporeal 
properties of extension and movement; and it is the 
moving power of the whole system. 

In comparison with the loftiness and purity of the 
Eternal Ideas, the Kosmical Soul itself was but an 
imperfect mixture, or compromise between the Ideal and 
the Sensible; and the human Soul could be no better. 
Still, in its participation of the Ideas (although conjoined 
with sense), it was self-moving and immortal. 

Aristotle set himself to confute all previous theories 
of the Soul. He rejected the doctrine of self-motion as 
the property of Soul; he regarded as untenable the 
favourite theory of perception—“ Like is known only by 
like”—and advanced very pertinent objections to that view. 
As to self-motion, he considered it incorrect to say that 
the soul is moved at all; looking more especially at the 
intellect or Nous, we might rather say that the state is 
not movement, but rest or suspension of movement. 

Both in his criticism and in his constructive theories, 
Aristotle made an advance upon his predecessors. His eye 
for facts, and his sobriety of judgment, raised him above 
fanciful and one-sided vagaries. He had studied the actual 


ARISTOTLE MATTER AND FORM. 


149 


phenomena of living bodies; had meditated deeply on the 
wide chasm that divides the inanimate from the animate 
world ; animated beings as a whole were to his mind more 
completely separated from inorganic bodies as a whole, 
than animals w T ere separated from plants. 

But it was the characteristic of this extraordinary 
genius to work at both ends of the scientific process; he 
was alike a devotee to facts, and a master of the highest 
abstractions. In this last capacity he originated many of 
* the subtle distinctions that have ever since permeated 
human thought. 

Whoever would begin at the beginning of Aristotle’s 
philosophy must first master his Four Causes, or condi¬ 
tions of all production:—(1) Matter , the material cause, 
what anything is made of—marble, brass, wood, &c.; (2) 
Form , the formal cause, the type, plan, or design of the 
maker—the idea of the statuary, the working plans of 
the architect; (3) the Efficient cause, or prime mover— 
human muscle, water, wind, or whatever is the force em¬ 
ployed ; (4) the Final cause, the end or purpose of the 
workman—his pleasure, profit, fame. 

Having once seen the scope of these four exhaustive 
conditions of every work of human industry, the reader 
may let drop the two last, as of far inferior importance, 
and concentrate his attention upon the distinction between 
the two first—Matter and Form, which, more than any of 
his other distinctions, lies at the root of Aristotle’s general 


150 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

thinking. He expands and diversifies the contrast in end¬ 
less ways. We must observe, however, that Matter, as one of 
the Four Causes, is not without Form, in the literal sense ; 
a block of marble has its form, although not the form 
intended ultimately. Now there is some ground for 
supposing that Aristotle, in pushing the distinction to the 
logical point of two abstractions ,—an abstract matter and 
an abstract form, separable in reasoning, but inseparable 
in reality,—had still clinging to him the original contrast 
of rough unshaped matter, and the finished production of 
the workman. At all events, his account of an individual 
substance is to regard (1) the Form, (2) the Matter, (3) 
the Compound of the two. 

That he was unduly possessed with the distinction 
between formed matter and raw material, to the obscuring 
of the logical distinction, we may infer from his making 
out a difference of dignity between form and matter. 
Form is the higher, grander, more perfect entity ; Matter 
has only a second place. This remark is entirely out of 
place in the logical distinction between the form of a brass 
ring, and the matter of it (abstracted from the form). 

Matter may be body, but it is not necessarily body. It 
is intelligible only as the correlate of Form. Each variety 
of matter has its appropriate form, and each variety of 
form its appropriate matter. There are gradations in 
matter, from the first matter (materia prima), which has no 
Form at all, to the highest developments which approach 
near to pure Form. The only meaning we can give to 


ARISTOTLE:—POTENTIAL AND ACTUAL. 


151 


these last statements, is to suppose that he had in his 
mind the different stages of elaboration of the material of 
the globe, from a so-called shapeless mass of mud, to the 
consummate organization of a living being. 

Another distinction struck out and designated by 
Aristotle, and permanently retained from its corresponding 
to a difference in the nature of things, was the distinction 
of Potential and Actual. Active agents have moments 
of rest or remission; they possess power, but do not 
use it. The eye awake is actually engaged in seeing ; in 
sleep, it is not deprived of the power, but holds it unem¬ 
ployed. Some form of language was required to dis¬ 
criminate the situation oi having power in reserve and 
quiescence from total want of power; Great Britain, in 
time of peace, is not to be confounded with nations 
destitute of a navy. 

The distinction of Potential and Actual serves its own 
turn in its own way, and has no connection with the other 
great distinction. But Aristotle could not help mixing up 
the two ; he sees in Matter by itself the Potential, in the 
imparting of Form to matter, the Actual or full reality. 
There is here apparently a reference to the distinction of 
the two causes. Matter in the rough is still a compound 
of matter and form ; a block of marble from the quarries 
is no more devoid of form, in the logical view, than a slab 
in the frieze of the Parthenon. The transition from the 
Potential to the Actual as regards bodies, is a transition 


3 52 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

from one Form to another Form. Still, for understanding 
what follows, we must keep in view the identifying of 
Actuality with Form in the sense of some superior 
product of formed material. 

We are now to see how he applied these rather shaky 
distinctions to the great problem of Soul and Body. 

In the antithesis of Matter and Form—Potential and 
Actual, the soul ranks not with matter but with Form, 
not with the potential but with the Actual. It has 
Matter (the Body) as its correlate; and this matter is 
highly organized, in other words, fitted with capacities 
or potentialities, and to these the Soul is the complement. 
The implication of Potential Matter and Actualizing 
Form or Soul is the totality of the living being. In his 
fondness for carrying out distinctions, Aristotle remarks 
that the living being has its two conditions of dormancy 
and full exercise, and the first or lowest stage of Actuality 
is quite enough to distinguish it; the second or higher 
Actuality, therefore, need not be introduced into the 
definition. Accordingly the Soul stands thus : — “ The 
first actuality (entelechy) of a natural organized body, 
having life in potentiality.” 

The strong point of the definition is the closeness of the 
connection of Mind and Body. Indeed they are too 
closely connected; or rather the manner of their connexion 
is incorrectly stated. In point of fact, the two are not 
relative and correlative, like Form and Matter (logically 


ARISTOTLE UNION STATED TOO CLOSE. 1$3 

viewed). Of correlative couples,—as light-dark, up-down, 
cause-effect, parent-child, ruler-subject, supporting-sup¬ 
ported,—the one can in no sense subsist without the 
other; the existence of either by itself is a contradiction 
in terms ; a parent without a child, a thing supporting 
with nothing to support—are absurd and unmeaning. 
Now, although, in reality, there is a close alliance between 
Soul and Body, there would not be a self-contradiction in 
supposing them separate; for anything we can see, the 
body might have its bodily functions without the soul, and 
the soul might have its psychical functions in some other 
connexion than our present bodies. Indeed, Aristotle 
himself reserves a certain portion of the Soul for inde¬ 
pendent existence. We must, therefore, pronounce the 
comparison of Soul and Body to a correlated couple, as 
irrelevant and unsuitable.* 

Nevertheless, out of the alleged mutual implication of 
the two, Aristotle obtains a very felicitous observation. 
All the actions and passions of the mind, he says, have two 
sides—a formal side as regards the soul, and a material side 
as regards the body. It is the business of two different 
sets of inquirers to master these two sides. The 
physical philosopher (6 <£uctiko's) and the mental philo¬ 
sopher would view the same passions differently. Take, 

* In a passing illustration of dialectical method, (Topica, Book V.), 
Aristotle speaks of the soul as exercising command, the body as obeying 
command. This is a familiar enough mode of representing the relation 
of the two, but it has no scientific validity. The power commanding is 
not pure, but embodied mind. 


154 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

for example, the passion of Anger. According to the 
mental philosopher, anger is the appetite for injuring 
some one (a truly mental fact). According to the physical 
philosopher, it is a boiling up of blood about the heart, 
with increase of animal heat (physical circumstances). 
Now, this illustration is perfect as representing the two 
sets of facts, different and yet inseparable. It w r as, how¬ 
ever, but a casual glimpse, a mere incidental flash in a pre¬ 
vailing gloom. His attempt to carry out the illustration 
to intellectual states, as memory, merely leads to some 
correct remarks as to the necessity of a sound condition 
of the sentient organs and body generally, in order to the 
exercise of intelligence. 

Other modes are given for stating the implication or 
correlation. The Soul is the cause and principle of a 
living body. Of the Four Causes, the body furnishes the 
Material, and the soul comprises all the three remaining, 
Formal, Movent or Efficient, Final. 

So much for one phase of the Aristotelian doctrine—the 
mode of stating the Union of the soul with the body. The 
other phase respects the gradation of Souls—a succession 
of Nutrient, Sentient, Intelligent principles. 

The remark has already been made that Aristotle had 
something like an adequate sense of the difference between 
Inanimate matter and Living bodies. As, perhaps, the 
earliest scientific naturalist, he perceived that the living 
body was characterised by organization, and by the pos- 


ARISTOTLE :—NUTRITIVE AND SENTIENT SOULS. 155 

session of remarkable powers or functions. He did not so 
strongly realize the boundary between life without con¬ 
sciousness (as in Plants) and life with consciousness (in 
Animals and Man). Hence he treated as generically 
homogeneous all living functions, all the active powers 
belonging to organized individuals. He applied the 
higher term “Soul” to all the characteristic 

functions of living bodies, from nutrition up to the loftiest 
attributes of intellect.* 

Accordingly, we must start from the Nutritive Soul, the 
basis of all the others, the first constituent of the living 
individual, the implication of Form with Matter in a 
body organized as a nutritive body; the soul of 
digestion, nutrition, and propagation of the species. Like 
all Soul (as will be seen) it partakes of the Celestial Heat, 
through which animated bodies possess their warmth. 

From the. nutritive we pass to the higher soul, both 
nutritive and Sentient. Herein lies the characteristic 
superiority of the Animal to the Plant. There is a great 
advance in point of dignity, as we may suppose. Applying 
the universal solvent—Form versus Matter—we are to 
remark that the soul as sentient and percipient, receives 
the form of the thing perceived without the matter; 
which is to beg the whole question of External Perception. 
Nevertheless, Aristotle’s discussion of the Senses and 

* Mr. Tylor would say that the Plant-Soul of Aristotle was the 
survival of the Plant-Soul of the lower races, rather than his own 
independent reflections on the community of plants and animals as 
living things. 


1-56 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

Sensation at large is full of just and original remarks, and 
was a real contribution to Psychology. 

From the Sentient Soul, we pass to the Noetic, the 
Nous, or Intelligence. The drawing of too sharp a line 
between Sense and Intelligence has been the fruitful 
source of confusions in philosophy; and has lent itself to 
the doctrine of the Immaterial Soul. At the same time, 
Aristotle fully recognizes the dependence of intellect upon 
sensation; we cannot cogitate or reason without sensible 
images (phantasms). But to reconcile this with the views 
that he took of the special grandeur and isolation of the 
Nous, was beyond his might. He declares (against his own 
definition of the Soul) that the noetic function has no bodily 
organs, that it is Form, pure and simple (seeming to con¬ 
tradict farther the mutual relationship of Form and Matter). 

At this point, however, he looks out for a new ally. 
The scene changes from earth to heaven. The human 
soul is not to be finished without celestial fire. 

The grand region of Form (pure and unadulterated) is 
the Celestial Body, the entire concave of heaven, 
with its eternal rotations, the abode of all divine natures, 
comprising the invisible gods, and the sun, moon, and stars. 
From this celestial region proceeds all life, all force; to 
every Soul, every Form that animates the matter of a 
living body, it imparts its vital properties. It is needless 
to comment farther on the self-contradictory employment 
of the abstraction. Form, to signify the heavenly sub- 


ARISTOTLE :— THE ACTIVE INTELLECT. 


157 


stance. Aristotle’s Physics and Astronomy were his 
weakest parts, and laid him open to the merciless scourge 
of Galileo. Even there he is not without brilliant 
inspirations; but he is led captive, with the vulgar, by 
the enchantment of distance. 

The Nous emanated from a peculiar and select influence 
of the celestial body; and its own operations are corres¬ 
pondingly dignified. It cognizes the abstract and the 
universal. It has two modes or degrees, on which hang 
great issues. There is, on the one hand, the receptive 
Intellect, Intellectus Patiens, and, on the other, the 
constructive or reproductive Intellect, Intellectus Agens 
(vovs dtoprjTiKos) ; the first perishes with the body; the 
second, the Agens, is intellectual energy, in the purest 
manifestation, separable from the animal body, and 
immortal. The climax is now reached ; logical consistency 
is abandoned; and there is gained a transcendental 
starting-point for the Immaterialism of after ages. 

Of the best known Greek sects, the Epicureans denied 
altogether the survival of the soul. The Stoics affirmed 
the soul as well as the body to be material, and considered 
it a detached fragment of the all-pervading soul of the 
world, into which, after the death of the individual, it was 
re-absorbed. 

Our course takes us next to the Fathers of the Chris¬ 
tian Church. 


158 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

The early Fathers had been pagan philosophers before 
they were Christians ; they thus brought with them into 
Christianity more or less of the tenets of their respective 
philosophical sects. Accordingly, the double materialism 
of antiquity was a prevailing tenet down to the fifth 
century. A proper immaterial or spiritual substance, 
as recognized by us, was as yet imcomprehensible to the 
greater number of men. Such a thing, no doubt, had 
made a beginning in the Greek schools, but was not as 
yet fully formed even there ; and it received no aid, either 
from Judaism or from Christianity. In these early 
centuries, it was very generally held as essential to the 
Christian doctrine of future rewards and punishments, that 
mind should be a corporeal substance; for only matter 
could be susceptible to physical pain and pleasure. 

In general, we may say, that the early Fathers, whether 
accepting the Oriental and Greek notions of transmigra¬ 
tion and pre-existence, or, like Irenaeus and Arnobius, 
making the immortality of the soul depend upon the will 
of God in his purposes for the salvation of part of mankind, 
describe in nearly the same terms the essence of Deity 
and the essence of the soul. Before and even after the 
Nicene Council, God was often described as a “ sublime 
light.” A converted Epicurean would add to this a human 
form ; a Platonist would use the term “ incorporeal ” in 
the Platonic sense of the word, which was not the modern 
sense. 

From Dr. Donaldsons History of Christian Doctrine 


THE SECOND CENTURY APOLOGISTS. 


139 


may be gleaned the views on the Soul held by the 
Fathers of the second century , named the Apologists. 
They were influenced by Platonic philosophy much less 
than is generally supposed. The only Platonist among 
them was Athenagoras. They were much more influenced 
by the prevailing materialistic tendencies ; Stoicism being 
what might be called the established religion of the time. 
Justin Martyrs expressions on the nature of God and 
the Soul are indefinite, but he would not seem to have 
recognized wholly immaterial spirit: although he rejects 
the Anthropomorphism of the Jews, he ascribes to God 
shape and locality; and though nowhere definite on the 
state of the soul after death, he considers it heresy to 
say that the soul is taken up to heaven ; and he holds 
that men rise with the same bodies. Tatian, however, 
the pupil of Justin, both is more definite, and recognizes 
a wholly immaterial spirit conjoined with a material spirit 
in the human body; God is immaterial, fleshless, and 
bodiless. His doctrine is, that there are two spirits in 
the universe, manifesting themselves in individual varieties 
of form; at one time they lived in union, but the lower 
spirit (the soul) became disobedient, fled from the perfect 
spirit, and sought a baser fellowship with matter; yet 
after all, when re-united as in man with the higher spirit, 
it becomes immortal. Theophilus does not maintain the 
immateriality of God; he only holds with Justin that 
the form of God cannot be expressed. Athenagoras 
differed essentially from his contemporaries in regard to 


160 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

the nature of the soul: he does not mention Pneumct, or 
higher Spirit; and he speaks of the soul as purely 
spiritual, though with a spirituality liable to be disturbed 
by its material tendencies. 

Clement of Alexandria speaks thus of God :—“ A 
positive knowledge of God is impossible: we know only 
what he is not. He is formless and nameless, though we 
are right to call him by the noblest names. He is infinite; 
he is neither Genus, nor Differentia, nor Species, nor 
Individual, nor Number, nor Accident, nor anything that 
any positive attribute can be ascribed to.” This is certainly 
not Corporeality, neither is it what we mean by an In¬ 
corporeal nature. It is merely working up a powerful 
impression, by the rhetorical employment of negatives. 

Origen conceived of God as a purely spiritual being,— 
not fire, not light, not aether, but an absolutely incorporeal 
IJnity or monad. Only on the supposition of Incorporeality 
can he be considered absolutely unchangeable, for every¬ 
thing material is changeable, divisible, transitory. This 
is an obvious following out of the transcendental germs 
in Greek philosophy. “ In the world, God, who is himself 
unextended, is everywhere present by his active power, 
like the builder in his work, or as our soul, in its sensitive 
part, is spread through the whole body ; only he does not 
fill evil with his presence.” “The human soul, as a 
created spirit, was enclosed in matter because of sin.” 
With all this, Origen further remarks that the word 


TERTULXjIAN. 


161 


“ incorporeal” is not to be found in Scripture, and that a 
spirit strictly means a body. 

Tektullian is represented (by Ueberweg) as joining, 
in the manner of the Stoics, with an Ethics tending to the 
repression of sense, a sensationalist doctrine of cognition, 
and a materialistic Psychology. He is a coarse Realist. 
“ The senses deceive not: all that is real is body. The 
corporeality of God does not, however, detract from his 
sublimity, nor that of the soul from its immortality. 
Everything that is, is body after its kind. The Deity is 
a very pure luminous air, diffused everywhere. What is 
not body is nothing. Who shall deny that God is body, 
though he is a spirit ? A spirit is a body of its own kind, 
in its own form. The soul has the human form, the same 
as its body , only it is delicate, clear, and ethereal. 
Unless it were corporeal, how could it” (as the Stoics 
also said) “ be affected by the body, be able to suffer or be 
nourished within the body ? ” “ Man is made in the 

likeness of God; God, in forming the first man, took for 
pattern the future man Christ.” 

The materialism of Tertullian is thus pronounced and 
decisive. Then, again, Melito wrote a treatise to prove 
God’s corporeality. Gregory Nazianzen conceives of spirit 
as possessing only the properties of motion and diffusion. 
Maximus could not accept the immensity of God, because 
he did not see how two substances could exist together in 
the same space. Even when the Deity was called 

M 


162 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOIJL. 

incorporeal, this property was not incompatible with 
visibility under certain circumstances; it meant only a 
negation, somewhat in the manner of the ancients, of 
the grosser properties of matter. That spirits could be 
seen was a very common belief; many persons declared 
that they had seen the souls of the dying as they left 
the body. Gradually, however, the attribute of visibility 
was abstracted from the nature of spirit; and the Deity 
began to be considered incorporeal, meaning also invisible; 
but the human soul did not rise at once to the same 
august distinction. Thus in Origen, the soul would seem 
to have a middle place between gross matter and the 
one truly spiritual essence—the Deity. It is to him a 
matter of astonishment that the material soul should 
have ideas of immaterial things; and he concludes 
that it must possess, if not an absolute, at least a relative 
immateriality. 

So much for the double materialism prevailing among 
the early Fathers. We shall next see the beginning of 
the spiritualistic movement within the Church. At this 
point, however, we may bring in the Neo-Platonists, who 
represent the closing influence of Pagan philosophy, 
and acted perceptibly on the later Fathers and the 
Schoolmen. 

Plotinus (204—269, a.d.) agrees with Plato in the 
grand distinction of the Ideal and the Sensible, and in 
attributing to the soul an intermediate nature. He 


NEO-PLATONISTS. 


163 


differs from Plato ■with regard to the relation of the 
Ideas to the One or the Good. While in the Platonic 
system the One or the Good is included as the highest 
among the Ideas, and all the Ideas are considered to 
have independent existence,—in Neo-Platonism, it is 
elevated above the Ideas, and is made the source whence 
they emanate. 

The One or the Good is the primary essence, the original 
unity, from which all things have sprung. It is neither 
Nous or Reason, nor anything cognized by Reason; for 
each of these necessarily implies the other; and the 
nature of the primary essence, as absolute unity, forbids 
its being identified with anything implying duality. 
Things emanate from the One, as rays emanate from the 
sun. The direct product of the One is the Nous, which 
is an image of it. The image involuntarily turns towards 
its original in order to behold it, and, through this act of 
comprehending what is supra-sensible, it becomes Nous. 
In the Nous the Ideas are immanent, not as mere thoughts, 
but as its component parts. 

The Soul is an image and product of the Nous, as the 
Nous is of the One; and it also in its turn produces the 
corporeal. It is turned partly to the Nous as its producer, 
and partly to the corporeal, its product. There is, therefore, 
in the Soul an Ideal indivisible element, and a divisible 
element, from which the material world is produced. The 
Soul is an Immaterial substance. It is not a body, nor is 
it inseparable from a body; for not only the Nous, its 

M 2 


164 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

highest principle, but even memory, perception, and the 
vegetative force are separable from the body. The body 
is in the Soul, not the Soul in the body. Thus a portion 
of the Soul is without any body; and for the functions 
of this portion the co-operation of the body is entirely 
unnecessary. Even the faculties of sense are not con¬ 
tained in the body; they are only present with it, 
as forces given by the Soul to the various organs for the 
discharge of their functions. The whole Soul is present 
not only in the whole body, but also in each separate 
part, not being divided among the members ; it is entirely 
present in the whole , and entirely in every part. In 
one sense, indeed, the Soul is divided, since it is in all 
parts of the body ; but in each of these parts it is present 
as a whole. 

Here we perceive a distinct advance towards Imma- 
terialism. In the Neo-Platonic doctrines are to be found 
the germs of various ideas that afterwards played a 
prominent part in the present subject. That the lower 
powers of mind and life are separable from the body, 
and that the body is contained in the soul, are tenets 
reproduced in the subsequent development of the subject. 
The notion that the whole soul is in the whole body 
and in every part, was taken up by Augustine, then by 
Claudian Mamertus, and from them passed over to the 
Schoolmen, with whom it was a favourite maxim. 

We now proceed to the later Fathers. The spiritualistic 


LATER FATHERS. 


165 


movement may be said to be headed by St. Augustine, 
the most profound and metaphysical of all the Latin 
Fathers; by Claudian Mamertus, a priest of Vienne, in 
the south of France; and in Asia, by Nemesius, Bishop 
of Emesa. 

But even anterior to Augustine (354—430), there were 
indications of the coming change. In this view, Gregory 
of Nyssa (331—394) is of importance. His work on the 
Creation of Man (says Ueberweg) contains a number of 
psychological remarks. Scriptural views are mixed up 
with Platonic and Aristotelian opinions. The possibility 
of the creation of matter, by the Divine Spirit, depends 
upon its being the unity of qualities in themselves 
immaterial. The human spirit interpenetrates the whole 
body; it came into existence with the body, and neither 
before nor after it. The spirituality of God, which is 
beyond dispute, proves the possibility of immaterial 
existence. The soul is a created, living, thinking, and 
(so long as it is provided with organs of sense) percipient 
entity. The thinking power does not belong to matter; 
otherwise matter generally vjould exhibit it [a happy 
hit], and in consequence would assume a variety of 
artificial forms. 

In Augustine’s discussion of this subject, the most 
remarkable point is his clear conception of the contrast 
between the respective properties of matter and of mind. 
He maintains that such attributes as length, breadth, 


166 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 


depth, hardness, &c., are attributes only of matter, and 
are unintelligible when applied to mind. “ The soul 
must not be conceived as in any way long, or broad, or 
strong. These are corporeal properties, and so we are 
inquiring about the soul after the manner of bodies” (De 
Quant. Animae, cap. 3.). Thus w r hile other qualities, such 
as hardness and colour, are occasionally mentioned, 
extension is always recognized as the great distinctive 
attribute of matter. 

On this definition of matter Augustine founds his proofs 
of the soul’s immateriality. It does not possess this 
characteristic property of matter, and therefore it cannot 
be material. This position he very often states and 
defends. His principal arguments are drawn from the 
superiority of the soul to the body, from the nature of 
consciousness and of memory, and from the equal presence 
of the soul in every part of the body. 

The soul is Superior to the body. From it alone are 
derived life, movement, and sensation, none of which are 
possessed by the body after the soul has fled. Thus the 
soul, though working through bodily organs, must be, in 
its own nature, superior to the body it animates. It is 
invisible, incorporeal, spiritual. 

Several arguments are drawn from our Consciousness of 
mental states. The soul, he says, is known by us directly. 
Our thoughts, desires, knowledge, ignorance, are better 
known than the objects around us, since these last are 
perceived through the medium of bodily organs. If, then, 


AUGUSTINE. 


167 


the soul be corporeal, it must be known to us as such. 
Yet in this direct knowledge of it we have no cognizance 
of corporeal qualities, such as size, shape, or colour; and 
hence Augustine concludes that no such qualities belong 
to it. Moreover, while we positively know that thinking 
and feeling are properties of the soul, we can only suppose 
that it is a material substance. That we have no real 
knowledge of such a substance is proved by the variety of 
conjectures about its nature. If we separate what we 
really know from what we only think, there remain such 
properties as life, thought, and feeling, which none have 
ever doubted. 

Another argument is founded on the nature of Memory. 
In the mind are stored up the images of a great variety of 
material objects. Though the body is small, the mind can 
take in the images of the widest domains; “and that it 
is not diffused through the places is shown by this, that it 
is not as it were comprehended by the images of the 
greatest places, but rather comprehends them, not by any 
enclosing (non sine aliquo), but by a certain indescribable 
power ” (Contra Epist. Manich., cap. 17.). If. then, 
these images, which resemble bodies, are really in¬ 
corporeal, we cannot believe otherwise of what has no 
appearance of corporeal properties. And if the things 
contained in the mind are immaterial, so also is the mind 
itself. 

Augustine lays considerable stress on the Neo-Platonic 
subtlety that the whole soul is at the same time in 


168 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 


every part of the body. “ The soul is at the same time 
wholly present not only in the entire mass of the body, 
but also in every particle of it” (De Immort. Animse, 
cap. 16.). “ When there is any pain in the foot, the 

eye looks, the tongue speaks, the hand moves; and 
this would not occur unless what of the soul is in 
those parts felt also in the foot; nor if not present in 
the foot could it feel what has there happened ” (Id. ib.). 
And this presence of the whole soul in every part of 
the body is not similar to the diffusion of bodies through 
space; for these are larger or smaller according to the 
space occupied. Nor is it like the case of a quality, 
such as whiteness, being wholly present in every part 
of some concrete object; for the matter that is white 
in one part has no connexion with the whiteness in 
any other part. Wherefore the soul possesses a peculiar 
nature of its own, having qualities exhibited by no 
material substance. 

In addition to these general arguments, Augustine 
brings forward special considerations to prove the 
immateriality of the rational soul. The objects of the 
Keason are incorporeal. The images of corporeal things, 
which it compares and judges, though resembling matter, 
are really unextended, and therefore immaterial. Truth 
and wisdom, which are perceived by the reason, have 
no trace of material properties. Nor in the faculty 
itself can we detect any such attributes. It cannot 
be divided into parts and extended through space in 


AUGUSTINE. 


169 


the manner of bodies. From all this, therefore, it is 
concluded that the rational soul is not material. 

In answer to the objection that, if the soul has no 
length, breadth, or thickness, it must be nothing, 
Augustine maintains that there are many really existing 
things that have none of these qualities. Justice, for 
example, has no extension, and yet it is not merely 
a real thing, but is of a higher nature than any corporeal 
object. The Deity is also without these attributes; and 
whoever believes the soul to be corporeal ought in 
consistency to hold the same opinion of God. The 
want of such properties, therefore, really proves the 
soul to be of higher dignity and value. 

Since, then, the soul is not matter, it may be asked 
by what name we are to call it. Augustine replies 
that “ whatever is not matter and yet has real existence, 
is properly termed spirit” (De Quant. Animse, cap. 13). 
This, he says, is supported by the usage of Scripture, 
though the word is also applied there to the intellectual 
part alone. 

Having drawn so broad a contrast between mind 
and matter, Augustine felt the standing difficulty of 
conceiving how the immaterial soul can act on the 
matter of the body in producing movement. Hence 
he thought that the soul does not act directly on the 
denser parts of the body, but on a corporeal substance 
nearer in its nature to the incorporeal. This substance 
he calls light and air, and supposes that these are mingled 


170 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 


through the denser materials. The commands of the 
soul are first communicated to this more subtle matter, 
and by it are immediately conveyed to the heavier 
elements. 

As regards the immortality of the soul, Augustine holds 
that no created being can be immortal in the same sense 
as God, since the existence of every creature depends con¬ 
tinually on the Divine will. At the same time he main¬ 
tains that none of the changes we see occurring either in 
the soul itself or in the body, tend towards the destruction 
of the soul. Even matter is not destroyed by change : 
however the form may be altered, it is still matter as 
much as before. And if such is the case with corporeal 
things, we cannot suppose that in this point the soul is 
inferior to them, since mind of any sort is superior to all 
material objects. Still farther, he reasons that the soul 
cannot be destroyed by any other created being, whether 
corporeal or spiritual. Matter, from its inferior nature, 
cannot destroy it. Nor can any more powerful spiritual 
being; for one mind is subject to another only in so far 
as its own will may allow such subjection, and it is evi¬ 
dent that no mind will desire its own destruction. Thus 
the soul can be destroyed by nothing but the will of God. 

If it be thought that the soul may die in the sense that, 
though not destroyed, it may exist without life, Augustine 
shows that such an idea involves contradiction in terms. 
The soul is life, and the source of life to everything that 
lives. “ The mind, therefore, cannot die. For if it can be 


CLAUDIAN MAMERTUS. 


171 


without life, it is not mind, but something made alive by- 
mind ” (non animus , sed animatum aliquid est —De 
Imort. Animse, cap. 9). 

The argument from the natural “ longing after immor¬ 
tality ” is frequently insisted on by Augustine. All men, 
he says, desire to be happy, and happiness cannot be 
genuine unless its possessor also desires its continuance. 
Now no man can be truly happy unless he have what he 
desires; and so, life must be eternal or happiness cannot 
be attained. Thus nature demands immortality. If it be 
objected that this argument implies that all, including 
even the bad, must attain to happiness, Augustine answers 
that happiness is granted to the good, not because they 
desire to live happily, but because they desire to live well. 
Happiness is the reward of goodness ; and since all do not 
desire a good life, all cannot obtain its reward. 

CLAUDIAN Mamertus, about the year 470, wrote a 
treatise De Statu Animce, in reply to an anonymous 
work, afterwards known to have been written by Faustus, 
Bishop of Regium in Gaul. Faustus had maintained that 
God alone is incorporeal; all created things are matter, 
the soul being composed of air. Mamertus answers from 
the Augustinian stand-point. According to Mr. Lewes, he 
has exhausted all the capital arguments whereby Descartes 
was thought to have established the doctrine of imma- 
terialism. Omitting his discussion of various points not 
immediately connected with our subject, and his extensive 


172 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

array of authorities from philosophers, from ecclesiastical 
writers, and from Scripture, we present in the following 
sketch an outline of his reasoning:— 

Man was made in the image of God, and, according to 
the admission of Faustus himself, the Divine nature is 
incorporeal. Now since there can be no resemblance to 
God in matter, we must believe that this image is to be 
found in an immaterial soul. Moreover, the immaterial is 
of a higher nature than the material; and since the Deity 
is infinitely good, he will desire to create beings of the 
highest dignity, without which his works would be incom¬ 
plete, and, being omnipotent, he will carry out this 
desire. 

Again, the soul is not limited by place ( illocalis .) It is 
wholly present in every part of the body as well as in the 
whole, just as God is present through the whole universe ; 
otherwise a portion of it wrnuld be lost when any part of 
the body is cut off. Whereas no material object can be 
present in more than one place at the same time, the soul 
at once animates the body, and as a whole sees through the 
eye, hears through the ear, &c. Its motion is not in space ; 
it takes place only in time ; being simply, as he explains, 
the change of thoughts and feelings. When the body 
moves, this local motion is not communicated to the soul. 

The soul has no quantity, for place and' quantity are 
inseparable. While no being except God is entirely 
beyond the sphere of the Categories (Aristotelian), it is 
only matter that is subject to them all; thus the soul has 


CLAUDIAN MAMERTUS. 


173 


quality but not quantity. In one sense, indeed, it has 
measure, number, and weight ; but then measure must be 
understood of degrees of wisdom ; number as the mental 
perception of external numbers; and weight must be 
applied to the will as the moving power in the mind. 

The soul is not contained by the body, says Mamertus, 
but in reality contains it—as had already been taught by 
Plotinus. This point he endeavours to prove by Scrip¬ 
ture, and then applies it to show that the soul must be 
immaterial; for no material substance can at once contain 
the body, and be within it as its animating principle. If 
it be thought a contradiction that the soul is in a place and 
yet is not bounded by place, Mamertus replies that the 
universe itself presents a similar difficulty; it cannot 
be contained in any place, else that place would require 
another, and so on till we should have to attribute to it 
the Divine perfection of infinity. 

In addition to all these considerations, Mamertus also 
mentions the argument—previously employed by Augus¬ 
tine, and afterwards by Descartes—that Reasoning is inhe¬ 
rent in the substance of the soul; and as reason is incorpo¬ 
real, so also is the soul. In a similar manner he also argues 
from the will and the memory. 

In refuting the arguments of Faustus, Mamertus dis¬ 
plays force and ingenuity. Thus he fully examines the 
argument from the corporeal allusions in the parable of 
Lazarus and Dives. He shows that if these allusions 
prove the materiality of the soul, they must all be taken 


174 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

in the most literal sense, which cannot be done without 
producing inconsistencies and absurdities. 

Nemesius, Bishop of Emesa, in Phoenicia (who flourished 
about the year 450), deserves mention as having had an 
influence in establishing Immaterialism in the Eastern 
Church. He wrote a work on the nature of the Soul, in 
which he occupies chiefly the ground of Neo-Platonism. 
He holds that the soul is an immaterial substance. It is 
involved, as Plato had taught, in eternal self-produced 
motion, from which the motion of the body is derived. 
He maintains the pre-existence of the soul, and holds that 
its nature, as supra-sensible, involves immortality. 

From the fifth century down to the great development 
of Scholasticism, headed by Thomas Aquinas, in the 
thirteenth, there occurred no important changes of 
view T in connexion with our subject. In this latter 
period it again emerges into prominence, but now 
the point of view is changed. All the reasonings of 
the Schoolmen were cast in the moulds of the Aristo¬ 
telian philosophy, and cannot be understood until Aris¬ 
totle’s leading modes of thought and expression are first 
comprehended. (See above under Aristotle, especially 
the explanations of Form and Matter, Actuality and 
Potentiality .) Thus, although Aquinas was a decided 
immaterialist, he does not aim, like Augustine and Claudian 
Mamertus, to show that the soul is without the material 


COURSE FROM ARISTOTLE TO AQUINAS. 175 

attributes of extension, quantity, &c.; be endeavours to 
prove that it is, in the Aristotelian sense, the Actuality of 
the body and pure immaterial Form. Hence in order to 
trace the development of the views culminating in 
Aquinas, we must recur to Aristotle. 

The course from Aristotle to Aquinas is shown in the 
following summary from Ueberweg. “Aristotle regarded 
as Form (his highest abstraction and antithesis to matter), 
immaterial, and yet individual, the Deity, and the 
Active Nous or Intellect—the only immortal part of the 
human soul; leaving uncertain the relation between this 
immortal Nous and the mortal compound of soul and 
body. Among his immediate followers, as Dicsearchus and 
Strato, the prevailing view was that all Form is immanent 
in matter. Alexander the Aphrodisian ascribes to Deity, 
but to Deity only, a transcendental existence, free from 
matter, and yet individual; he makes the human soul 
depend entirely on matter for its individual existence. 
The later commentators, given over to Neo-Platonism, as 
Themistius, assert the human Nous to have the same 
independent and individual existence as the Deity. On 
this side Thomas Aquinas ranges himself.” 

Albertus Magnus (1193—1280) deserves to be men¬ 
tioned in this connection as having influenced the opinions 
of his pupil Aquinas. He held that the Active Intellect 
is a part of the soul, being in each man the principle that 
confers Form and individuality. In this principle are 


176 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

also contained the forces called by Aristotle, Nutritive and 
Sentient, and hence these latter powers are separable 
from the body and immortal. Every human soul is 
immortal by virtue of its community with God. 

Thomas Aquinas (1225—1274) represents the highest 
stage in the development of the Scholastic philosophy. 
His views on the nature of the Soul are to be found in 
several of his numerous philosophical and theological 
works, but they are most conveniently gathered from the 
First Part of his Summa Theologies, where the points 
are fully and systematically set forth. The following 
abstract includes only such of his opinions on the soul as 
concern our present purpose. 

In maintaining that the Soul is not material, he says it 
is the primary source of life in all living beings. Now 
while body may be a secondary source of living operations, 
as the eye, for example, is the source of vision, body as 
such is not living or a source of life. It must have this 
power as body of a particular kind (per hoc quod est tale 
corpus ), and the source whence anything receives its 
character is its Actuality. “ The soul, therefore, which is 
the primary source of life, is not body, but the Actuality 
of body; as heat, which is the source whence bodies are 
made hot, is not body, but a sort of actuality of body.” 
(Sum. Theol. I. 75, 1.) 

The soul of man is an independent substance. For by 
the intellect man cognizes the natures of all kinds of 


THOMAS AQUINAS. 


177 


bodies. This could not be, if the intellect were matter, 
since the thing knowing must have nothing in it of the 
nature of the objects known ; nor, if it cognizes by means 
of body, because the determinate nature of the medium 
would hinder it from knowing all kinds of bodies, just as 
a diseased eye distorts vision, or the colour of a vessel 
affects the colour of a liquid contained in it. Therefore 
the intellectual principle works by itself without con¬ 
nexion with the body ; and as only a substance can thus 
work by itself, the soul of man is an independent sub¬ 
stance. But this does not apply to the souls«of brutes; 
for the sentient soul cannot work of itself, but requires 
the co-operation of the body. 

Thomas holds, as already stated, that the soul is pure 
Form, entirely without matter. As regards the intellect 
in particular, it could not otherwise cognize the essence 
of things. Matter is the principle of individuality, 
and would prevent the intellect from cognizing the uni¬ 
versal, just as the sentient powers, which operate through 
bodily organs, perceive only individual things. 

While repudiating the Platonic doctrine of pre-existence, 
Aquinas maintained the immortality of the soul as flowing 
from its immateriality. It cannot perish by anything 
external to itself; for since it is fitting that the beginning 
and the end of existence should take place in similar 
ways, what has independent being, can perish only of 
itself. Nor can it perish in this way; for because Form 
is Actuality (see above in Aristotle), existence belongs 

N 


178 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

to it from its very nature. '“Matter perishes through 
being separated from its Form ; but it is impossible that 
Form should be separated from itself; wherefore it is im¬ 
possible that existing Form should cease to have being.’* 
(This is similar to the reasoning of Augustine given 
above, and the latter half of the argument is equivalent to 
the Platonic view in the Phaedo that life is inseparable 
from the very notion of the soul.) Besides, says Aquinas, 
adapting to his own modes of thought the argument from 
the longing of the soul after immortality, “ everything 
naturally desires existence after its own manner, and in 
things having the faculty of knowing, desire follows know¬ 
ledge. Now while sense can know existence only under 
the limits of space and time (cognoscit esse sub hie et 
nunc), the intellect apprehends it absolutely and with 
reference to all time. Hence beings having intellect 
naturally desire to exist always, and a natural desire 
cannot exist in vain.” (Sum. Theol. I. 75, 6.) 

So much for the essential nature of the soul. In a 
separate discussion, he considers the union of Soul and 
Body. Here he inquires whether the intellectual prin¬ 
ciple is united to the body as its Form. He reasons that 
whatever brings a thing into actuality is its Form; and 
the principle that makes the body living is the soul, 
from which it receives growth, feeling, motion, and also 
understanding. And unless the intellect thus stands to 
the body in the intimate relation of Form to matter, we 


THOMAS AQUINAS. 


179 


cannot comprehend how its actions can be attributed 
to the man as his. The Platonic doctrine, that the 
soul stands to the body merely in the relation of its 
moving principle, is repudiated. Thomas adds to all 
this that the higher any Form is, the less is it mingled 
with matter, and the more does it excel matter in 
its operations. And as the human soul is the noblest 
of all Forms, some part of its operations has no 
relation to matter, namely, the operations of the 
Intellect. 

Following his master Albertus, Aquinas holds that 
the nutritive, the sentient, and the intellectual faculties 
are exercised by one and the same soul. He argues 
that otherwise a man would not be really one, for 
the unity of any object comes from the same Form 
that gives it being. Besides, their identity appears 
from the fact that any operation of the soul, when 
intensely carried on, hinders any other. Thus the 
higher Form really includes the lower one—the sentient 
and the nutritive souls of Aristotle. (This opinion 
received dogmatic sanction at the Council of Yienne, 
in 1311). 

Aquinas holds the idea, originated by Plotinus, that 
the whole soul is present in the whole and in every part 
of the body. But he characteristically distinguishes three 
lands of totality. The soul is not present in each part as 
a whole in any quantitative sense, nor is it present in the 
wholeof its powers. This presence as a whole in each 

N 2 


180 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

part must be understood as a presence of its whole nature 
and essence. 

In discussing the faculties of the soul, Thomas argues 
that they do not all remain when the soul is separated 
from the body. Some powers are connected with the 
soul alone, as intellect and will; and these remain in the 
incorporeal state. Others are joined to the body, as 
the sentient and nutritive parts; and these disappear as 
to actual operation, when their bodily organs perish, 
though they still potentially remain in the soul. The 
Intellect is divided, after Aristotle, into Active, Theorizing, 
or Reproductive (intellectus agens ); and Passive, or 
Receptive (intellectus patiens). An Active Intellect 
is necessary in order that the Forms of material 
things, which are mingled with matter, may be made 
intelligible in Actuality. This Active Intellect belongs 
to the soul; for though we may suppose (according 
to the Platonic view) a higher and separate Intellect, 
in which the Intellect of man participates—which 
Aquinas in one sense admits, making the Deity such 
an Intellect—yet we must suppose that this par¬ 
ticipation gives the human Intellect the power of 
separating the universal from the particular; which is 
to concede the operation of an Active Intellect within 
the souL 

The following diagram exhibits the transition from 
Aristotle to Aquinas. Let the continuous lines represent 


COMPARISON OF ARISTOTLE AND AQUINAS. 181 


the material substance, and the dotted lines the im¬ 
material. Aristotle’s scheme stands thus :— 

A. Soul of Plants. 

-Without Consciousness. 

B. Animal Soul. 

.Body and Mind inseparable. 

C. Human Soul— Nous — Intellect. 

I. Passive Intellect. 

7~7 . . . .“7 Body and Mind inseparable. 

II. Active Intellect—Cognition of the highest principles ; 

.Pure Form ; detached from matter ; the 

Celestial substance; immortal. 

Compare the position of Aquinas :— 

A. Vegetable or Nutritive Soul. 

. . .... . Incorporates an Immaterial part, 
although unconscious. 

B. Animal Soul. 

. I ! . 7 7 7 Has an Immaterial part, with 
consciousness. 

C. Intellect. 

.Purely Immaterial. 

Duns Scotus (in the end of the thirteenth century) 
drew back somewhat from the extreme position of 
Aquinas. He held that God alone is absolutely pure 
Form; all created beings, including angels and the soul, 
are composed of form and matter. The matter of the 
soul, however, is very different from the matter that 
constitutes bodies ; it is a created something, the basis of 
all finite existence, including corporeal matter itself. 

But this protest was without effect. Aquinas had 













182 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 


triumphed; the utmost limit of abstraction in the line of 
dualism had been reached. 

Coming down now to modern times, we have to recog¬ 
nize Descartes as, by pre-eminence, the philosopher of 
Immaterialism (the word Spirituality is not used by him). 
Still, it is not unlikely that John Calvin, who preceded 
him by a century, had a considerable share in making 
this the creed of religious orthodoxy. 

Calvin substantially adopted the settlement of Aquinas. 
His views are found in his “Institutes,” and in a short 
treatise “ On the Sleep of the Soul,” written against the 
doctrine that the soul is unconscious between death and 
the resurrection, a view that some of the Reformers 
were inclined to, in their opposition to purgatory. We 
follow Calvin’s phraseology in the “ Institutes.” The 
Soul is an immortal essence, the nobler part of man ; it is 
a creation out of nothing, not an emanation ; it is essence 
without motion, not motion without essence. Its power 
of distinguishing good and evil, the swiftness and wide 
range of its faculties (so opposed to the brutes), the power 
of conceiving the invisible God,—are evidences that it is 
incorporeal, being incompatible with body. Then as to 
the vexed connexion with space: the soul is not properly 
bounded by space; still it occupies the body as a habi¬ 
tation, animating its parts and endowing its organs for their 
several functions. The strength of Calvin’s reasoning is 
still the “ point-of-honour ” argument. 


DESCARTES. 


183 


Now for Descartes. It is not uncommon to style him 
the father of modern mental philosophy, so forcibly did he 
insist on the fundamental and inerazible distinction 
between matter and mind. Matter, whose essence is 
Extension, is known by the senses, and is so studied by the 
physical observer ; mind, whose essence is Thinking, can 
be known only by self-consciousness, the organ or faculty 
of the metaphysical observer. He made the distinction 
(which Reid dwelt so much upon in his “ Inquiry”) 
between the mental element and the physical element in 
sensation; the feeling that we call heat being one thing, 
the physical property of the fire being a different thing. 
He stated it as a cardinal principle that nothing conceiv¬ 
able by the power of the imagination could throw any 
light on the operations of thought; which was merely 
stating, that the feelings and thoughts of the mind were 
something very different from a tree, a field, a river, or a 
palace, or anything else in the extended world. He argues 
for the Immateriality of the mental aggregate, or thinking 
principle. 

Descartes was not without his theory of the physical 
accompaniments of the immaterial principle. He assigned 
to the soul a definite centre or locality in the brain, namely, 
the small body near the base called the pineal gland. He 
explained the mode of action of the brain by the flow of 
animal spirits along the nerves ; but then the effect of 
these animal spirits was confined to the manifestations of 
our animal life, and did not connect themselves with the 


184 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

thinking principle or the proper soul. It is well known 
that he refused mind to animals, treating them as auto¬ 
matons or machines. In the fifth chapter of his “Dis¬ 
course on Method,” he goes very fully into what he 
considers the impassable distinctions between man and 
the brutes. 

For his clear conception of the difference between 
matter and mind, Descartes deserves all praise ; that was 
to establish a fact. His appended doctrine of an im¬ 
material substance is an hypothesis, for which, even if 
argument would suffice to make it intelligible and tenable, 
his arguments were singularly inadequate. He gives the 
often-repeated distinction between the divisibility of 
matter and the indivisibility of mind ; but although this 
could impose even upon Bishop Butler, it was blown to 
tatters like a cobweb by the materialists. True, a lump 
of brass is divisible; but make it into a watch, and you 
can no longer split it into two without destroying it as a 
watch. You can no more cut a man’s brain into two 
working brains than you can bisect his intelligence. 

The great rival of Descartes in his own time was 
Hobbes, with whom substance was body, or matter, and 
nothing else. Spirit meant only a subtle invisible fluid, 
or sether (whose existence, however, he took no account of 
in his philosophy) ; or else it was a ghost, or mere 
phantom of imagination. But we must go on to the 
eighteenth century aspect of the question. 



LOCKE. 


185 


Locke’s allusions to the subject are characterized by 
his usual sagacity and sobriety. He cannot see that we 
are in any way committed to the immaterial nature of 
mind, inasmuch as Omnipotence might, for anything we 
know, as easily annex the power of thinking to matter 
directly, as to an immaterial substance to be itself annexed 
to matter. These are his words :—“ He who will give 
himself leave to consider freely, and look into the dark 
and intricate part of each hypothesis, will scarcely find his 
reason able to determine him fixedly for or against the 
soul’s materiality.” 

About the close of Locke’s career, begins the great 
materialistic campaign of the last century, which may be 
said to culminate in Priestley. Before Priestley, the 
most important names on his side (the materialist) were 
Toland and Collins ; while Samuel Clarke, a leader of the 
opposition, attacked more especially the materialism of 
the now forgotten Dodwell. Priestley had to contend with 
Price, whom he always treated with respect, and with 
Baxter, an extreme spiritualist, now a shade. Bishop 
Butler had argued for spiritualism in his “ Analogy,” but 
had contributed nothing new to the defence. It will be 
enough for us to advert to the Priestley stage of the 
English controversy; but first let us dispose of De la 
Mettrie and the continental materialists, who belong to 
the earlier half of the century. 

De la Mettrie is introduced to us by Carlyle, among 


186 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 


the boon companions of Frederick, in the early part of his 
reign. He was a bon vivant, a diner-out, and a wit, as 
well as a philosopher; and his tragical end has no doubt 
been often used as a moral against too great fondness for 
good eating. His books, “ Man a Machine,” “ Man a 
Plant,” are written with much vivacity and cleverness of 
illustration, and were well suited to make an impression 
upon the more sceptical of his contemporaries. They are 
mainly made up of copious illustrations of the influence 
exercised over the feelings by physical conditions, such, 
for example, as food, stimulants, &c. “ What a vast power 
there is in a repast! Joy revives in a disconsolate heart; 
it is transfused into the souls of all the guests, who 
express it by amiable conversation or music.” Again : 
“ Raw meat gives fierceness to animals, and would do the 
same to man. This is so true that the English, who eat 
their meat underdone, seem to partake of this fierceness 
more or less, as shown in pride, hatred, contempt of other 
nations.” So, “ Man has been broken and trained by 
degrees, like other animals. . . .We are what we are 

by our organization in the first instance, and by instruction 
in the second. . . . Man is framed of materials, not 

exceeding in value those of other animals ; nature has 
made use of one and the same paste—she has only diver¬ 
sified the ferment in working it up. . . . We may 

call the body an enlightened machine. . . . It is a 

clock, and the fresh chyle from the food is the spring.’ 
He goes slightly into the question whether matter has an 


DE LA METTRIE. 


187 


inherent activity, adducing examples in the affirmative; 
but we shall see this position better argued by Priestley. 
He will not undertake to decide the existence of a Deity, 
the arguments for and against are so nearly balanced in 
his mind, and he is equally uncertain about Immortality; 
but he thinks materialism the most intelligible doctrine, 
as contenting itself with one substance, the most comfort¬ 
able to entertain, and the most calculated to promote 
universal benevolence. 

A similar strain of argument, with less wit and more 
logical concatenation, appears in the “ Systeme de la 
Nature ” of Baron d’HoLBACH ; but we need not occupy 
space with him. 

Joseph Priestley, besides being a voluminous and able 
writer on theology, mental philosophy, history, and many 
other things, was a distinguished experimenter in physical 
science, as his well-known discoveries attest. He com¬ 
mences his work on “ Materialism” by an appeal to what 
was emphatically the eighteenth-century logic—not the 
logic of Aristotle, nor even of Bacon, but the logic of 
Newton: for Newton was a logician by precept no less 
than by example; his four rules of philosophizing were 
not merely given at the outset of every work on natural 
philosophy, but were laid to heart and acted out by scien¬ 
tific inquirers. Priestley was also, in consequence of his 
scientific studies, the fit man to deal with the crude and 
inaccurate notion, adduced as an argument for spiritualism 


188 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 


(8), that matter is a solid, impenetrable, inert substance, 
and wholly passive and indifferent to rest or motion, except 
as acted on by some power foreign to itself. In opposition 
to this view, he shows that matter is essentially gifted 
with active properties, with powers of attraction and 
repulsion; even its impenetrability involves repulsive 
forces. Indeed, he is disposed to adopt the theory of Bos- 
covich, which makes matter nothing else than an aggre¬ 
gate of centres of force, of points of attraction and repul¬ 
sion, one towards the other. The inherent activity of 
matter being thus vindicated, why should it not be able to 
sustain the special activity of thought, seeing that sensa¬ 
tion and perception have never been found but in an 
organized system of matter ? It being a rigid canon of 
the Newtonian logic, not to multiply causes without 
necessity, we should adhere to a single substance until it 
be shown, which at present it cannot, that the properties of 
mind are incompatible with the properties of matter. In 
following out his argument, he presents a well-digested 
summary of the facts referring to the concomitance of body 
and mind ; and cleverly retorts the doctrine that the body 
impedes the exercise of our powers, by remarking that, on 
that theory, our mental powers should be steadily in¬ 
creasing as we approach to dissolution. He urges the diffi¬ 
culties of having an immaterial and unextended substance 
joined with matter in the relation of place, as well as me¬ 
chanically acting upon matter—points that had never in¬ 
deed been cleared up to the satisfaction of the immaterialists 


PRIESTLEY. 


189 


themselves. As the Fathers had often said, there can be no 
mutual influence where there is no common property. He 
is especially indignant at the practice of shielding absurdity 
under the venerable name of “ mystery.” He would doubt¬ 
less have applied Newton’s rule against multiplying causes, 
to forbid the multiplying of mysteries without necessity. 
And, in general, as to a spiritual substance, the vulgar, like 
the ancients and the first Fathers, will never be able to 
see the difference between it and nothing at alL He then 
takes up the Scripture view of the question, endeavouring 
to prove that the language of the Old Testament implies 
only a single substance with spiritual properties or 
adjuncts; that the same view is most conformable to the 
New Testament; and that the doctrine of a separate soul 
embarrasses the whole system of Christianity. Of course he 
will not admit a middle state, between death and the 
resurrection; nor that such a state apart from the body 
has anything to do with the immortality of the soul, which 
doctrine he rests exclusively on the Scripture testimony 
to a general resurrection. 

Such is a summary of by far the ablest defence of the 
single-substance doctrine in the last century. It became 
the creed of great numbers at the end of that century and 
the beginning of this. The celebrated Robert Hall was for 
many years a materialist in Priestley’s sense ; and the occa¬ 
sion of his ceasing to be so can hardly be considered as a 
refutation of the doctrine. He says of himself, that “ he 
buried his materialism in his father’s grave.” 


190 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

Coming down to the present century, we may take 
Dugald Stewart as a fair representative of the meta¬ 
physicians. We find him repudiating materialism ; but 
when we inquire what he understands by it, we see that 
he really means the confounding of mind and matter 
under one common phenomenon, or one set of properties— 
the material properties; as in an unguarded phrase of 
Hume’s, “ that -little agitation of the brain that we call 
thoughtfor though an agitation of the brain accompanies 
thought, it is not itself the thought.* * * § Stewart says that 
“ although we have the strongest evidence that there is 
a thinking and sentient principle within us essentially dis¬ 
tinct from matter, yet we have no direct evidence of the 
possibility of this principle exercising its various,powers in 
a separate state from the body. On the contrary, the 
union of the two, while it subsists, is evidently of the most 
intimate nature.” And he goes on to adduce some of the 
strong facts that show the dependence of mind on body. 

* It is not often that either single-substance materialism or double 
materialism is exemplified by moderns, except through incaution in the 
use of language. Robert Hooke (quoted by Dr. Reid, “Intellectual 

Powers,” Essay II., chap ix.) indulges in a materialistic strain, not 
unlike some of the ancient philosophers. “ In his lectures upon Light, 
he makes ideas to be material substances ; and thinks that the brain is 
furnished with a proper kind of matter, for fabricating the ideas of each 
sense. The ideas of sight, he thinks, are formed of a kind of matter 
resembling the Bononian stone, or some kind of phosphorus.” 

A materialism of this kind pervades Darwin’s Zoonomia, from which 
the following expressions are quoted by Mill (“Logic,” Fallacies, chap. iii. 

§ 8) The word idea “ is defined a contraction, a motion, or configura¬ 
tion, of the fibres which constitute the immediate organ of sense • ” 
“ our ideas are animal motions of the organ of sense.” 


DUGALD STEWART.—FERRIER. 


191 


He says that the.mental philosopher is rightly occupied in 
ascertaining “ the laws that regulate their connexion, with¬ 
out attempting to explain in what manner they are united.” 

The late Professor Ferrier, who in his “Insti¬ 
tutes of Metaphysics ” has set forth, in a nomen¬ 
clature of his own, the contrast or antithesis of mind 
and matter, bestows a somewhat contemptuous handling 
on the common-place spiritualism. We quote his 
words:— 

“ In vain does the spiritualist found an argument for 
the existence of a separate immaterial substance on the 
alleged incompatibility of the intellectual and the physical 
phenomena to co-inhere in the same sub-stratum. Materi¬ 
ality'may very well stand the brunt of that unshotted 
broadside. This mild artifice can scarcely expect to be 
treated as a serious observation. Such an hypothesis can¬ 
not be meant to be in earnest. Who is to dictate to 
nature what phenenoma, or what qualities inhere in what 
substances; what effects may result from what causes ? 
Matter is already in the field as an acknowledged entity— 
this both parties admit. Mind, considered as an inde¬ 
pendent entity, is not so unmistakably in the field ! There¬ 
fore, as entities are not to be multiplied without necessity, 
we are not entitled to postulate a new cause, so long as it 
is possible to account for the phenomena by a cause 
already in existence ; which possibility has never yet been 
disproved.” 


192 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

Hamilton remarks that we cannot localize the mind, 
without clothing it with the attributes of extension and 
place ; and to make the seat or locality a point only 
aggravates the difficulty. We have no right to limit it to 
any part of the organism; the mind cannot be denied to 
feel at the finger points. The sum of our knowledge of 
the connexion of mind and body is—that the mental 
modifications are dependent on certain corporeal condi¬ 
tions ; but of the nature of these conditions we know 
nothing. (Lectures on Metaphysics, ii., 127.) 

The reply may be given to Hamilton that, in one signifi¬ 
cation of the words, it is correct to say that we know nothing 
of the corporeal conditions of mind, namely, that they 
are generically distinct from mind itself; that they cannot 
be resolved into mind, and mind cannot be resolved into 
them. In another signification, however, we know a great 
deal respecting these material conditions, and may one 
day know all that is to be known about them. Indeed, 
something has been known from the very beginning of 
human observation. 

It is quite true, as Hamilton remarks, that to localize 
mind is to run into contradiction and absurdity. This, 
however, may be averted by adapting our phraseology to 
the peculiar nature of the things; in speaking of mind, 
we must avoid the language of extension or place. 

Mansel (Prolegomena Logica, p. 138) remarks:—“ To 
this day we are ignorant how matter and mind operate on 


MANSEL. 


193 


each other. We know not how the material refractions of 
the eye are connected with the mental sensation of seeing, 
nor how the determination of the will operates in bringing 
about the motion of the muscles.” Here there is the 
erroneous assumption that power or efficiency belongs to 
mind in the abstract. Assume the alliance of mind and 
matter, and there is nothing hopeless in seeking an 
explanation of their mutual action. The alliance itself is 
an unaccountable, because an ultimate, fact; of it no expla¬ 
nation is competent or relevant, except generalizing it to 
the uttermost. 

Again, says Hansel, “We can investigate severally the 
phenomena of matter and mind, as we can severally the 
constitution of the earth, and the architecture of the 
heavens; we seek the boundary line of their junction, as 
the child chases the horizon, only to discover that it flies 
as we pursue it.” The mistake is in looking for a 
boundary line at all. We look for a boundary between two 
parishes, two estates, two adjoining tissues of the animal 
framework; but between the extended body, and the 
unextended mind, the search for a boundary line is incom¬ 
petent and unmeaning. 

I now pass to the latest phase of this eventful history. 

A movement in favour of Materialism has arisen in 
Germany within the last twenty years; which is in part 
a re-action from the high-flown philosophy that so long 
prevailed, and in part an application to mind of the 

o 


194 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

physical science of this century, as Priestley in his day 
applied the physical science of the last century. 

It is to be remarked, however, that spiritualism, in the 
form of dualism, was never the philosophic creed of 
Germany. Kant, who ridiculed alike materialism and 
idealism, yet did not ascribe to matter a real existence 
by the side of an independent spiritual principle. Fichte 
and Hegel, being over-mastered with the idea of unity, 
had to make a choice; and attaching themselves by pre¬ 
ference to the dignified mental side, became pantheists 
of an ideal school; resolving all existence into mind or 
ideas. People generally, when tired of Kant’s critical 
position, became either materialists, or idealists, and not 
believers in two substances. 

As regards the recent materialistic movement, scientific 
men first broke ground. Emphatic utterances were made 
by such men as Muller, Wagner, Liebig, and Du Bois 
Reymond, all tending to rehabilitate the powers of matter. 
But the outspoken and thorough-going materialism 
begins with Moleschott, who in 1852, published his 
“ Circular Course of Life,” a series of letters addressed to 
Liebig. In 1854, Vogt came into the field, in an 
attack upon Wagner, the great physiologist, who had 
said that, although nothing in physiology suggested a 
distinct soul, yet this tenet was demanded by man’s moral 
relations. In a series of subsequent works, Yogt has 
urged the dependence of mind on body in extreme and 
unnecessarily offensive language. The third and most 


RECENT GERMAN MATERIALISM. 


195 


popular expounder of these views is Buchner, in his 
book “ Matter and Force,” which was first published in 
1856, has run through a great many editions, and has 
been also translated into English. 

It is not necessary to expatiate upon the views of these 
writers. Their handling turns partly on the accumulated 
proofs, physiological and other, of the dependence of mind 
on body, and partly upon the more recent doctrines as 
to matter and force, summed up in the grand generality 
known as the Correlation, Conservation, or Persistence of 
Force. This principle enables them to surpass Priestley 
in the cogency of their arguments for the essential and 
inherent activity of matter ; all known force being in 
fact embodied in matter. Their favourite text is “no 
matter without force, and no force without matter.” 
The notion of a quiescent impassive block, called matter, 
coming under the influence of forces ab extra , or super¬ 
imposed, is, they hold, less tenable now than ever. Are 
not the motions of the planets maintained by the inherent 
power of matter ? And, besides the two great properties 
called Inertia and Gravity, every portion of matter has 
a certain temperature, consisting, it is believed, of intestine 
motions of the atoms, and able to exert force upon any 
adjoining matter that happens to be of a lower tempera¬ 
ture. Then they ask with Priestley and Ferrier: “ Why 
introduce a new entity, or rather a nonentity, until we 
see what these multifarious activities of matter are able 
to accomplish V } They also reply to the spiritualistic 


196 HISTORY OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOUL. 

argument based on the personal identity of the mind and 
the constant flux of the body, by the obvious remark, that 
the body has its identity too, in type or form, although 
the constituent molecules may change and be replaced. 

It is not to be supposed that these writers are in the 
ascendant in Germany, or that their language is always 
metaphysically guarded. Still, having written intelligible 
books, easily appealing to a palpable and determinate 
class of facts, they have been extensively read; and their 
ideas or the scientific facts that they are based on, are 
modifying even the highest transcendentalism of that 
remarkable country. 

• 

The rapid sketch thus given seems to tell its own tale 
as to the future. The arguments for the two substances 
have, we believe, now entirely lost their validity ; they are 
no longer compatible with ascertained science and clear 
thinking. The one substance, with two sets of pro¬ 
perties, two sides, the physical and the mental—la double - 
faced unity —would appear to comply with all the 
exigencies of the case. We are to deal with this, as in 
the language of the Athanasian Creed, not confounding 
the persons nor dividing the substance. The mind is 
destined to be a double study—to conjoin the mental 
philosopher with the physical philosopher; and the 
momentary glimpse of Aristotle is at last converted into a 


clear and steady vision. 


6 86 *« 


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